May 2008 #4

I’M ENCOURAGED – I am receiving more and more responses to these “Musings.” A home schooling mom thanked me for them and then told me that she uses some of them as she teaches her children. A home missionary wife wrote about illustrations, “My husband keepings telling people, “Speak, I need an illustration.” One “Musing” caused one lady to write with a question I was able to answer and hopefully remove some confusion she was having about a passage of Scripture. The President of our Mission told me he wished more of the retirees would take the time to write similar things. Others tell me, “Keep them coming, we enjoy them.” About 240 receive them and if you can send me other e-mail addresses to add to the list I would appreciate it. I’ve only had two ask to be removed from the mailing list in all this time. A couple of times I have been corrected which is acceptable with me. We are not always going to find agreement but we learn and grow from those experiences. Please keep the comments coming.

FAMILY REASONS & HOW MANY’S – One of the reasons I write these “Musings” is that my kids have asked me to write a book about my life and experiences but I really don’t feel prone to do that and this attempts to supplement that request. When I asked the questions in the last “Musings” of “Thinking About My Life” and the "How many’s” was stimulated by their request. Hopefully others might also get a smile or a memory from them, not experienced by our younger generation. Moving on to the “How many things I have sold or tried to sell by direct sales and other odd jobs,” I am reminded of the director of the CBA Churches in Oregon telling me, “I wish all our pastors could have the experience of selling insurance for a couple of years so they would learn how to deal with people.” That is one I tried, having sold hospital insurance and a little life insurance during a difficult time of my earlier years when jobs were scarce. I sold shoes and other clothing items for J. C. Penney’s and separately. Going back earlier, as a boy I sold papers in Baker, Oregon on street corners. I helped a friend do the same in a suburb of Los Angeles as a teenager. In Junior High I set pins at a bowling alley and worked on numerous truck farms using a hoe and gathering crops. I also boxed (rather than bagging) groceries and stocking shelves in a grocery store. Later when pastoring a small church we distributed an area paper in Ogallala, Nebraska, picking them up from the bus stop and seeing that the deliver boys got their allotment, including my own boys. Just out of high school I went to Western Union’s training school and worked in several of their offices. In fact, during my junior year of high school I delivered telegrams for Western Union in Baker, Oregon to pay room and board. During those earlier struggles in Oregon I sold cemetery lots for a while. Also in Ogallala when the church was so small they didn’t properly care for their pastor I did a number of different things. I dug a few ditches and drove a dump truck hauling and spreading manure. My wife always hated for me to come home for lunch. During the same period I mowed city park lawns and helped a drugstore set up new store shelving and counters. When I started our first church in Federal Way, Washington I was working for Boeing Aircraft and when that became too much while ministering and putting up the church building, I took odd house painting jobs and painting trim on houses newly resided. I also worked with a friend installing insulation, mostly in new homes. That was a terribly itchy job. I use to receive a “Specialty Salesman Magazine” and I tried selling five year light bulbs, calendars, shoes, boxed greeting cards and AMWAY to mention a few things done to keep body and soul together while ministering to small churches. Amway was something I got into that also gave the boys something to sell helping toward their college expenses. I once managed chain variety stores before ministry days (that is where I met my wife) and then in a variety store while ministering to a small church. I drove school busses in two different places while ministering in churches in Federal Way, Washington and also in Blue Rapids, Kansas. I haven’t counted all these things but it does give you an idea of things that occupied my earlier years. At one point I worked for the Oregon Temperance League raising funds to teach high school students of the harm of using alcohol. I finally decided this was a secondary issue and preaching the Gospel was more important because as people get saved the use of alcohol stops. These are out of sequence but it gives you a broad view of things I have done before and during ministry years. Its enough to make my head spin thinking about it. I’d better move on to something else.

HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE LAWS – Grassfire and the Liberty Counsel are warning us that the California Supreme Court has ruled that homosexual marriages are legal and though there is a referendum coming up in November to pass a constitutional change defining one male and one female marriages, they are expecting thousands to rush to California to get married. All these coming from other states will then create problems and bring pressures here in Ohio and elsewhere. You can contact Grassfire or Liberty Counsel and sign a petition to try and stop this nonsense.

GLOBAL WARMING/NOT – Constant pressures and added expenses are being placed on us by environmental causes that are ridiculous. There have always been climate cycles that bring about these changes. The carbon output of industry and our cars is only a minimal fraction of what volcanoes are belching out into the air. As much as I believe man should give care and reason in their use of our environment, environmentalists are forcing unnecessary expenses on us. I recently read where we are actually in a cooling cycle and will be for the next ten years. Still, they keep screaming global warming at us and pushing their “green” policies on society from grade school children on up the line through businesses in general. Where does it end and when do people get past the politically right agenda and collect their senses. I’ll remind people again, when God brought into existence His creation, He also put in the safeguards and all that was necessary for our continued existence for another thousand plus years when He will bring about His new heaven and earth for the eternal estate. Knowing this truth ought to bring Christians to realize it is futile to be taken in by all this “green” hype. So much for Al Gore and the position he has made for himself and others with all this nonsense.

FOOD BILLS, Etc. – I commented on this prophetically in my last “Musings” and I am just adding some currant details going on now, that I suppose most are aware of as well. With truckers having to spend over $1,000.00 to fill up their tanks at an even higher diesel price than for gasoline, we are really beginning to see prices go up in the grocery store. More and more families are going to have to return to cooking from scratch and forget the prepared foods so readily available today. I don’t know how to do those things and further, all that preparation for just two, when we aren’t eating nearly as much as in the past I am not sure it would work for us. This is particularly true with Betty and her condition and the little she eats. Guess I should have taken home economics in high school to know how to deal with such matters. Who would have ever dreamed of that need so many years ago? Times surely are changing and with both husbands and wives working I don’t know how they will have the time to do that kind of preparation either. Our dilemma grows and people are beginning to think and search for cost saving answers to the crisis. I am suspecting that the fast food places and restaurants may begin to feel the pinch too as families have to cut back. Bicycles may be coming back but I really don’t see how they will be very practical considering the distances people have to travel to work and purchase groceries these days. Even vacations may be cut back for closer to home plans. Maybe our politicians will get smart and come up with some answers. That is not likely! (Smile)