Dig a Ditch

Yesterday our minister told us the story of the King of Israel and the King of Judah going to war together against the King of Moab. That’s found in II Kings chapter 3. Jehoram, King of Israel and Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, band together and march toward Moab. On the way they run out of water for their troops and animals.
The King of Judah asks if there is a prophet of God anywhere around who might invoke the Almighty’s help in solving this dilemma. The story is rather intricate and has the possibility of many points and lessons; however, the sum is that God tells Elisha the prophet to tell the kings that the water will come…if they dig ditches in the valley.
Our minister’s point was that God is often willing to do for us, but we must do our part as well. We must dig the ditches, so to speak. My guess is that had the kings not had the ditches dug, the water would not have appeared.
He and the story in the Bible are correct, of course. How often do we get ourselves into some kind of pickle, then ask God to magically fix it all for us? One of the examples he used to illustrate this is our getting into a financial mess through overspending, over borrowing, and greedy selfishness, then when the chickens come home to roost we ask God for a magic fix, like winning the lottery. God is more than willing to help; we must, however, dig some ditches. That is, we might develop a workable budget, find extra work, sell some things we don’t need, start giving to God’s work, start saving, etc. We then often find that God was right there all along, just waiting for us to come to our senses.
I’m not certain what your issues are for which you’ve asked God for help. I do know that most of the time He expects you to do something…to dig a ditch…in faith that deliverance will come.
Speaking of digging ditches and the example of giving to God’s work, I heard recently that the Barna Group discovered some time ago that overall church giving is about 2% of American income. And that giving to missions efforts are about 2% of that 2%, or 0.04% of total church giving. I’ll not comment on those numbers except to ask that you take them in and examine your own church giving in light of the command found in Judaism to tithe of the gross, and additional opportunities for offerings on top of that. The New Testament does not give any certain percentage for Christians to follow; however, it does talk a lot about being generous and giving joyfully. Is 2% generous in your opinion? Just asking. Would you answer with just a “yes” or “no” and not couch your answer in excuses and convoluted reasoning? Then perhaps it’s time you started digging a ditch.

Some Thoughts on Spiders and the Creation

Each fall, I look forward to the orb spiders spinning great webs over a span of several feet across some opening. They catch insects in those webs, lay their eggs and die, having provided for the continuation of a cycle that has gone on for millennia.
I’ve blogged before about the engineering that goes into these webs and the massive undertaking that it is for the spider to create these marvels of nature. I even blogged one year about a spider that created a horizontal web across our little fish pond in our back yard just inches above the water…I would have given my eye teeth (one of which has a crown on it anyway) to see her do that. I still wonder how it got done.
But this year the spiders weren’t that plentiful. The wife didn’t have to leave the garage door open (or closed) in order to not disturb a web. No sidewalk was taken up with a web across it. I only saw a single web in my yard…at the southeast corner. And it was there only one day as far as I know.
I don’t know if the harsh dry summer had anything to do with the dearth of spiders, or if it was something else that kept their numbers down. I do know that I missed seeing them this year, and usually have three or four webs at any given time in the fall, even in my smallish yard.
The cycles of nature, reproduction, population, weather, and so on are continuing miracles to watch and track. Many people, I suppose, don’t care for such observations, preferring the television, the I Pad, or something else to occupy their time. And I must admit I spend my share of time on the computer and watch some TV. But there’s just something about seeing the intricacy and fragility of the natural world, right alongside the toughness and resilience of the same that causes a sort of worshipful attitude in my soul. I am at once humbled and amazed at what I see, even in today’s modern world, of the beauty and spectacular wisdom that is a part of this universe and a part of my present tense experience.

An Idiotic Response

Let’s say you worked at a job where you weren’t offered health insurance as a benefit, or your portion of the monthly premium was too much for you to afford, and you went to the doctor one day because of an ache in your side. You had some cash money, so you let the doctor order a scan and some other tests. He tells you that you have cancer in one of your internal organs (just choose one…it doesn’t matter). He tells you that he wants you to schedule a consult with a cancer specialist and that you’ll have to have surgery, radiation, chemo, blood transfusions, special medications for at least a year or more, follow-ups, more scans, and many, many doctor visits.
The costs associated with these things are well into the six figures, just for the next three months of treatment. Scans are $2,000 each. Each consult or office visit is $150 or more, and there are far more office visits and consults than one can count on both hands, both feet, and using all teeth. Radiation and chemo therapy are well into the four figures each time (and there are many such therapies). Surgery costs around $1,000 a minute. Transfusions, even using Red Cross blood, are four figures each. Medications cost from $1,000 to $10,000 dollars a month or more depending on what they are.
You’ve managed to save up four or five thousand dollars for health concerns. You see the potential two to five hundred thousand dollar bill. You’re an intelligent person, worked all your life, paid your taxes, and happen to have a job that doesn’t help you with health insurance (there are millions of jobs out there like this).

To which charity or charities do you go to obtain the means to pay for the services you need for your cancer?

What, you haven’t a clue? Neither do I. Yet that is the answer given by some people running for and in national and state political office regarding health care in this nation and the fact that some people are uninsured. One former office-holder even said that they could go to the emergency room and get care. Yeah, emergency rooms are equipped to handle cancer therapy…right. They’d escort you right back out where you came from, and legally, too, I might add. All emergency rooms have to do is provide life-saving treatment for an immediate life-threatening event and an exam to determine whether or not you need immediate, life-threatening treatment.
Can your church afford a half-million dollar bill? Can your family? What about the Salvation Army? Or maybe the local United Way. Probably not.
Listen to one lady as she responds, No "charitable organization" would have helped pay for my mastectomy and the unexpected additional surgery thirteen days later, three and a half days in the hospital attached to a morphine drip, my reconstructive surgery or the Tamoxifen prescription that I need to take every day for the next five years. Nor will they pay for my follow up mammograms, Oncologist appointments, or any other necessary treatment and preventative measures. I am lucky - I have a good job and am able to afford to pay for my health insurance.
I don’t know what the answer is. I do know what it isn’t. It isn’t what it currently is, and it isn’t the idiotic response given by some in public office, and running for public office. Nuff said.

Short and Succinct

I was out running some errands today and had occasion to have to cross the railroad in north Wichita. I got to the stop light on 29st Street Eastbound at Broadway and the railroad cross arms come down. Long train coming, it looks much like the one pictured, and it’s moving about 20 miles an hour.
Smugly, I make a right turn on to Broadway and head South down to 21st Street. By the time I get within about ¼ mile of that intersection, the train clears and the arms go up at 21st Street. I head on to the intersection and manage to make a left turn from Broadway onto 21st Street just as the light turns yellow. I no sooner take my first look onto 21st Street eastbound when I see the lights on and the arms about half way down again. Mindful that the police sometimes ride the rails or sit so they can see, I decide not to gun it across the tracks with the arms on their way down. I slide to a stop just before the arm comes down in front of me. As I peer to the south, I see the lights of another engine coming rather slowly, but deliberately.
Waiting what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the train finally gets to the intersection…another mile and a half long train speeds by at about 15 miles an hour, not more than a mile or so behind the last one that came through. I would have been better off waiting at 29th Street to cross!
OK, what’s the lesson here? Is it “Smugness comes back to haunt you?” What about “Those who don’t want to wait end up waiting longer?” OK, how about “Be sure your attempts to beat the system will find you out…and get back at you.” Could it have been, “If you hadn’t run that yellow light to make the turn, you could have gone down to 13th Street.” Or maybe if I’m super-spiritual, it could be, “You didn’t listen to the Spirit tell you to just wait at 29th Street.”
Would someone just let me know what I need to learn so I don’t have to go through this exercise yet again? I’m getting old enough that I may not have time for the extended lessons and need the short and succinct.

Heaven

I don’t often do a religiously-oriented blog anymore. I’m not sure why not. The inspiration just doesn’t come all that often anymore. However, I’ve been reading a book, which is sometimes a somewhat dangerous thing to do. The book is an older one titled Heaven by Randy Alcorn. In the book, Alcorn makes the argument that what we think of as eternal life in heaven, or going to heaven when we die is in reality a melding of the new heavens and new earth as mentioned several times in the Bible. We will, he says, be in an eternal existence on a renewed earth that has combined with heaven, an existence much like that of Adam and Eve before the fall. We will inhabit incorruptible bodies much like the one Jesus had after his resurrection, Alcorn says, and we will be active, thinking, rational human beings…except there will be no sin to mar the perfection.
I don’t know what I think of this just yet. I’m not finished with the book. But I must say he makes a compelling argument from scripture and from what we know of God’s creation and His intent for His creation. I’ve always thought that there was something to this new heavens and new earth thing, and I’ve always thought that when Paul says we will be like Jesus in our resurrections, he means it. But I never took the time to take apart the Book to the extent Alcorn has, and develop the arguments he has developed.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t really wish to float in some ethereal, wispy-ghostly state on a cloud (or anywhere else, for that matter). And eternally having nothing to do except singing and falling down before the throne of God appeals to me not one iota. Don’t misunderstand that last statement, folks. I’ll do more than my share of praise to the God of Heaven. I think there’s more to it than that, however, and am looking forward to finding out what it is.
Whatever you think about death, heaven, hell, eternal life, etc, know that in all probability you will be in error. Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard what we have in store for us as God’s elect. Soli Deo Gloria.

The Fiftysix Star Flag

I was perusing the children’s section at a local library recently. I came across a book that told a story about the liberation of a concentration camp at the end of World War II in Germany. Curious how the book was written so that children could understand, without being too graphic, I pulled the book (40 pages) from the shelf and read it.
It tells the story of the liberation of Mauthausen Concentration camp by a platoon of Americans led by Staff Sgt. Albert Kosiek. The book didn’t hide any of the atrocious and heinous acts of the Germans, but tells about them in such a way that children can at the same time understand, yet not come away from reading the book with fright or terror. The book does a great job of reminding even the children of today of such things so that we as a society may never forget—and never allow or condone such to happen again.
I checked other records for accuracy of the account in the children’s book when I came home that evening. The book, although simply written, was accurate in its account. One of the book summaries I found says this about the flag you see pictured here. “On May 6, 1945 when the 11th Armored Division of the U.S. Army marched into the Mauthausen Concentration camp, they were presented with an extraordinary gift. Despite their desperate and starving conditions, a group of prisoners had surreptitiously sewed scraps of sheets and jackets together to make a U.S. flag. Even though the inmates had added an extra row of stars (they weren’t sure how many stars the flag had…they put 56 on the flag), Colonel Richard Seibel had the flag flown over the camp as a tribute to the humanity, perseverance, and spirit of the survivors of Mauthausen.”
The name of the book is The Flag With Fiftysix Stars; A Gift From the Survivors of Mauthausen. There are a hundred lessons for humanity in this account of the liberation of Mauthausen, and there are thousands more lessons for the human race in the history of World War II. I’m not Jewish. You probably aren’t either. Nevertheless, we must never, ever forget. And we must continue to pass down the history…all of it both good and bad…untainted by political correctness, bigotry, ignorance, or narrow-mindedness.

The Farm Never Left the Boy

While visiting my cousin today, who is in an adult care home in a neighboring town, we (my sister and I) had opportunity to visit some with a few of the other residents who were there and were gathered in the “visiting” room along with us. One of the ladies remarked that she liked my shirt, which had the words “Wheat Farmers” on the front of it (It’s a long story). We visited some about farming, wheat, etc.
One of the residents overheard the conversation and asked me where I farmed. I told her I haven’t farmed for years, ever since I was a teen. We visited a little about that and about her farm, and then I told the lady that the boy may have left the farm, but the farm never left the boy.
After we had left the facility, I recalled something former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said. His comment was, "I will always consider myself first and foremost a kid from Kansas who got lucky. I have now worked for eight presidents. Whatever I have accomplished I believe has been due to my Kansas roots and heritage -- a heritage of family, friends, mentors, and values. The boy left Kansas, but Kansas never left the boy."
We don’t hear that kind of thing said all that often anymore. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the place we were raised, the work we did, the family we came from, or something else. I have to wonder just how much we appreciate our past and the things and people that were a part of it.
The newspaper where I obtained that quote (The Hays Daily News) also quoted Gates as saying this, "We must never forget the ideals and the beliefs that make us a nation; we must never forget the hopes and aspirations of our people; we must always keep the faith. In addition to a wonderful home, my youth in Kansas was rich with good and modest people. Character, and integrity, Kansas values and Kansas common sense became the bedrock of my life, a bedrock that has been my touchstone no matter how far I have traveled or how long I have been gone from Kansas."
I don’t cite this to say that Kansans are somehow better than Texans or Californians, but rather to say that who we are is more a function of our past, and who and what we interacted with as younger people than we might think (or like to think). Yes, we can change. No, I don’t want to go back to the “good old days”. And yes, we can embrace the new and different.
Some of us celebrate our history. Others of us wish to eliminate it from our memories. Still others just don’t remember much at all. But we all are affected by it regardless and in spite of it all. We live in the present, look to the future, and recall the past. Somehow, thanks to the God of heaven and earth, it all gels together and we are able to function, work, play, and live and love.

Some Politics

For the Republican debate this evening, Bloomberg News ran a blog showing some of the claims made by the candidates, along with a “reality check” of the background and the facts of the matter (at least as Bloomberg sees them…I make no representation that these are “really” the facts, but it’s interesting to get another opinion.) By the way, if I find something similar for Democrats, I will do the same. I have reprinted that blog below:

The Claim: Mitt Romney said that the federal government, using its “friends” on the National Labor Relations Board, is telling Boeing Co. “you cannot build a factory in a non-union state.”
The Background: The NLRB’s acting general counsel sued Boeing in April over its decision to locate a 4,000-job factory in South Carolina, saying the move was intended to punish union activity at its base in Washington.
The Facts: The NLRB didn’t say Boeing had to close the South Carolina plant. It called for increasing production at the plane maker’s commercial hub in Washington state to an equivalent level as planned for South Carolina.

The Claim: Mitt Romney said that President Barack Obama's health-care law raised spending by $1 trillion.
The Background: The 2010 health-care law that Obama signed included a mix of pending increases and cuts.
The Facts: The law increases spending by $788 billion over 10 years, while cutting spending by $931 billion over the same time for a net deficit reduction of $143 billion, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in March 2010.

The Claim: Representative Michele Bachmann said that she was a "lone voice" in Washington urging Congress not to raise the federal debt ceiling this summer. Bachmann said she opposed giving "Barack Obama another $2.4 trillion blank check to spend."
The Background: Following a contentious and partisan debate, Congress voted to raise the federal limit on government borrowing this summer by as much as $2.4 trillion, in exchange for an agreement to find at least that much in budget savings over the next decade. Bachmann and many other Republican lawmakers opposed the agreement, saying government needed to curtail spending in order to stop borrowing.
The Facts: The debt ceiling, which stood at $14.3 trillion before being raised this summer, covered obligations and spending Congress had already authorized. If Congress hadn't raised the limit by early August, the government wouldn't have been able to meet up to 40 percent of its obligations. President Obama would have been forced to decide whom to pay -- choosing among Social Security recipients, veterans, investors in U.S. government debt and others. Although the debate has often been testy, Congress had always raised the debt ceiling.

The Claim: Herman Cain said Bloomberg News' analysis of his 9-9-9 plan is incorrect. "The reason it's incorrect is because they start with assumptions we don't make," he said.
The Background: Cain's proposal would eliminate the current U.S. Tax code and tax sales transactions and gross income for individuals and businesses at 9 percent while eliminating levies on capital gains. It also ends the payroll tax that funds Social Security and corporations wouldn't pay a tax on dividends.
The Facts: Cain said his campaign has received an independent revenue analysis of his plan, though that analysis hasn't been publicly released. He also hasn't detailed the specific assumptions his campaign is using. Working with the only data publicly available, Bloomberg News calculated that the 9-9-9 plan would have generated about $2 trillion if it were in place in 2010, compared with the $2.2 trillion the government collected that year. Cain's plan would generate $922.1 billion from the sales tax, $912 billion from the individual income tax and $127.7 billion from the tax on corporations. Cain said that his plan would win passage in Congress. Congress has been reluctant to eliminate some of the most popular tax benefits currently in the code, such as the mortgage interest deduction, which survived the 1986 tax code overhaul.

The Claim: Michele Bachmann said Obama's health-care law will be run by a board of 15 political appointees who will "make all the major health-care decisions for over 300 million Americans."
The Background: Bachmann was referring to the ``independent payment advisory board," a panel of 15 health-care authorities established by the 2010 health-care law to help curb Medicare spending. Beginning in 2015 the panel will begin proposing cuts to Medicare if yearly spending exceeds targets set by the law. Congress could overrule the panel only with a supermajority in the Senate or if it comes up with an alternate plan that saves an equivalent amount.
The Facts: The board only has authority over Medicare, in which about 48 million elderly and disabled Americans are now enrolled, not the 300 million Bachmann mentioned. The law doesn't grant the panel power to make health-care decisions and prohibits the group from cutting benefits, changing eligibility rules or increasing beneficiaries' premiums or cost-sharing. Instead, the board's main tool for cutting spending will be reducing payments to providers. Link to the law: http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

The Claim: Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, said the economic meltdown "can be traced back" to federal government housing policies like the Community Reinvestment Act and the implicit backing of mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She also said that the Dodd-Frank Act ``institutionalized all of these problems that were put into effect by the federal government.''
The Background: In 2008 the U.S. financial system was on the brink of failure in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. A $700 billion bank bailout was required and lawmakers, economists, academics and federal regulators spent much of the next three years attempting to identify the causes of the crisis, which accelerated in 2007 and reached its height with the September 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
The Facts: While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were seized in 2008 by the federal government, played a large role in the mortgage crisis due to the volume of loans they purchased that went sour, nine of the 10 commissioners on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission agreed that the two mortgage firms were not the cause of the crisis. The majority FCIC report, signed by six Democratic appointees, blamed banks and federal regulators for the crisis. A dissent by three Republican members blamed the crisis on 10 factors, with the inflation of the credit bubble by the Federal Reserve serving as the leading catalyst. Fannie and Freddie were not a primary cause, the three Republicans said.
Research published by the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco and Richmond concluded that the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 law aimed at increasing mortgage loans to lower-income Americans, had little to do with fueling the subprime mortgage crisis.
The Dodd-Frank Act, enacted by President Barack Obama in 2010, did nothing to institutionalize a government guarantee in the mortgage market. The law largely ignored the mortgage giants.

The Claim: Republican candidate Herman Cain pledged to present a balanced budget a year after taking office. He said the only way to bring down the national debt is ``the first year that I'm president and I oversee a fiscal-year budget, make sure that revenues equals spending. If we stop adding to the national debt, we can bring it down.''
The Background: Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza with no experience in elective office, is seeking to demonstrate a command on the economy and fiscal issues to compete with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
The Facts: A proposal by the heads of President Barack Obama’s debt commission to cut the budget by $4 trillion wouldn’t wipe out the deficit for more than 25 years. According to a research group, the Bipartisan Policy Center, there will be an $830 billion deficit in fiscal year 2013 assuming current policy such as the extension of tax rates. To balance the budget in fiscal year 2013 through spending cuts alone, it would require a reduction equal to 25 percent of all spending, the policy center said, citing Congressional Budget Office projections. That would be more cuts than it would take to eliminate one year's spending on Medicare and Medicaid.

The Claim: Michele Bachmann said that ``nine years from now the Medicare hospital Part B trust fund is going to be dead flat broke."
The Background: Medicare Part A pays for inpatient hospital services. Medicare Part B pays for outpatient services such as doctor visits.
The Facts: The hospital trust fund is Part A, not Part B. Part A is estimated to be exhausted in 2024, not in nine years, according to the Medicare trustees' annual report released this year. Under one set of estimates by the trustees, the Part A trust fund's expenditures begin to exceed income in nine years, but will not be ``broke.'' In the report, the trustees said the Part B trust fund is ``adequately financed over the next 10 years and beyond.''

The Claim: Texas Governor Rick Perry said he will offer a plan “for getting America independent on the domestic energy side.”
The Background: Presidents since Richard Nixon in 1973 have set a goal of U.S. energy independence. Oil imports have risen since then and accounted for 49 percent of U.S. consumption last year.
The Facts: The U.S. had proven reserves of 19.12 billion barrels of oil, compared with 1.33 trillion barrels in global reserves as of 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency forecast in April that the U.S. will rely on imported fuels for 42 percent of consumption in 2035.

The Claim: Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has ``in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars'' on bailouts of financial institutions and that nobody in the news media has demanded transparency from the central bank.
The Background: The Fed stretched its emergency powers during the financial panic of 2008 to rescue Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. It also created unprecedented lending tools to provide funds to banks, mutual funds and large corporations.
The Facts: The Fed made loans to financial institutions -- it didn't spend any money, and has said it has incurred no losses. While the central bank kept much of the information on the identity of borrowers confidential at the time, the Dodd-Frank Act and lawsuits by Bloomberg News and Fox News resulted in disclosure of the recipients in late 2010 and early 2011. The Fed has separately spent $2.3 trillion purchasing housing and government debt as part of monetary policy.

I don't know about you, but I have seen these codes, called QR codes, in many places. They are, as one descriptor says, two dimensional analog equivalents to bar codes. I don't have a phone (or anything else) that can scan or utilize these codes...yet.
As an older person, I'm always a little skeptical of things like this, fearing that somehow I'll be carried somewhere I don't want to go or that someone will find out something about me that I don't want them to know. Yes, I know they are, for the most part, innocuous. But one never knows, and maturity also carries with it a sort of built-in skepticism meter that tends to go off when things like this present.
I wasn't aware until not long ago that there are free URL's where one can make his own QR code. That's what I did here...it's my own.
I don't know if you'll want to scan it to see what it is or not. I won't tell you, though, just in case.

The Test of Time

James Dobson, in an old video called “A Father Looks Back”, tells of one time when he was playing Monopoly with his family. As the game progressed, he became more and more wealthy and successful in the pursuit of the game. He talks of having hundred-dollar bills tucked away here and there…of his opponents landing on his properties with hotels and houses on them, and generally being quite the bragging winner.
Then the game was over. He had won handily, and by this time the rest of his family wasn’t too interested in helping him put the game away, so he began to do it himself. As he began to dismantle the game and put the pieces back into the box, he was struck by the similarity to real life.
We work hard. We accumulate much. We win at the game of life in terms of what most people would call win. Then one day it’s over. We die. And it all has to go back into the box. We take nothing with us. We use none of our accumulation of things to pay our way anywhere. Our money, houses, automobiles, jewelry, and all the rest are useless to us. Someone packs it up and puts it all back into the box.
Dr. Dobson ends this segment of the video with these words, “The conclusion that I’ve drawn that outranks all others is, ‘Nothing in life matters except love for God and His Son Jesus Christ, and love for mankind, beginning with my own family.’”
I don’t know about you, but in my view, the lesson here is crucial and the message here is timeless. And it applies not only to fathers, but to all who live in this creation. Yes, it is important for us to care for ourselves and our families as God blesses us. Yes, it is important to be good stewards of what God gives us. And yes, it is important to work and be productive.
But when all is said and done; when I enter into eternity on the other side of death, what will matter is not whether I have accumulated a certain amount of material possessions or whether I have a great retirement plan. What will matter is my relationship with the One who made me and has my eternal destiny in His hands. “Well done, good and faithful servant,” is the one thing I want to hear. Nothing else really matters and nothing else can stand the test of time or of eternity.