"Do the Things"

 Good morning, and welcome.

 Every time I sit down to write another Thursday Thought, I think back over the week’s highlights, and try to decide if I’ll write about one of those, or maybe select some other topic for discussion with you.  Most of the highlights of my week aren’t really what one would call highlights…they’re just points in time that for some reason, I recall.

Take this week for example.  Monday morning was occupied first with a visit to my primary care doctor regarding some lower back pain.  Later, at the church office, I began my notes for the Bible class I will be teaching this coming Sunday.

Monday also was the day after.  The day after keeping four of our grand kids for the weekend.  Pat and I were both pretty tired; however, we couldn’t rest because two more of the grands would be dropped off that evening to spend 24 hours with us Monday night and Tuesday.  So, we mustered our strength and welcomed them warmly.

Tuesday, I helped move some furniture for a client of ICT SOS…someone who had just moved into an apartment and needed some donated furniture moved there.  I volunteer for ICT SOS from time to time as I can, and they asked if I could help.  I was happy to do so.  I also pretty much finished my Bible class notes on Tuesday and started to review them.

And, I stopped at Office Depot and bought a new office chair.  The old chair was literally falling apart…having served me here for the past 13 or so years.  I took the new chair home and put it together…nothing comes already assembled anymore…to take to church the next day.  The grands went back to Dad and Mom Tuesday evening, and Pat and I pretty much were done for the night following dinner at home.

Yesterday, Wednesday, was a day of cold and wind…again…  It seems we have had more than our share of that kind of weather this year, but at least now the cold doesn’t last more than a day or so and the snow doesn’t stick to the ground…at least in southern Kansas.  Yesterday was also the day we found mostly expired food piled at our church door sometime overnight or early morning.  The food is so old we can’t use it and we certainly will not give it away to anyone else.  Instead, we will be throwing it away.  I was so irked I wrote a Facebook post about it and put it on my timeline.

I also brought the new office chair to work and exchanged chairs…throwing away the old chair as it wasn’t good for anyone or anything anymore.  The new chair sits higher and has a better lumbar support than the old one.  I am hoping I’ll soon become comfortable in it and my lower back will positively respond to the support.

I picked up some medication at the neighborhood pharmacy for myself and my wife.  We use a locally-owned pharmacy just up the street from the church.  It’s convenient and provides great customer recognition and service.  Public Service Announcement here:  Please use a locally-owned pharmacy if you at all can do so.  The service is better.  They need your business.  And prices are comparable and sometimes less.

Today, because the wind has died down, I was able to put out some bird seed on the upper deck, and also filled the bird water dish.  Yesterday, it was so windy that anything I would have put out would have blown away in a matter of minutes.  I don’t have a lot of bird seed left from the winter months, and would like to make good use of it in what remains of the late winter and early spring days.

I’m also typing this Thursday Thought for you today, and wondering what the rest of the day will be like.  It’s been quiet so far today, as it has been pretty much all week.  It’s bill-paying time for us right now, as we receive our retirement checks this week.  So I’ll be doing that this weekend.  Hopefully, there will be some money left to live on after the bills are paid.

Well, there you have it.  Those were the highlights of the week.  As you can see, there was nothing earth-shattering this week.  No skydiving.  No deep sea fishing.  No exotic vacations to even more exotic Pacific islands.  Just life.  Just living.  Just doing the things.  There’s an enjoyment that I get from being able to “do the things.”  Doing those things that are part of everyday life.

One of these days, I’ll no longer be able to do the things.  Someone else will have to do them.  Either that, or there will be no more things to do.  I suspect that I will eventually enjoy that, too.  Because eventually, I’ll have other things to do…things in the hereafter that God has promised for me to do.  Because I believe that the hereafter will NOT be a floating on a cloud in the great beyond existence…but rather will be in the new heavens and the new earth…that I will inhabit a body that will not break down or wear out…and that I will have meaningful and wonderful things to see and do.  I think I’m looking forward to that day more and more as in the here and now I can…and sometimes want…to do less and less.

 

May God bless you this week as you “do the things” that come your way.

 

Blessings.

How Do Insects Fly?

 

Good morning, and welcome.

 How do insects fly?  Now, you might question my sanity about now, asking this question at the start of my Thursday Thought.  However, I’ve been thinking about this for a short time…and the more I think about it the more I am fascinated by just how these little assemblies of tissue manage flight…some from the moment they are born.

 Think about it.  We humans send people to flight school to learn…not to fly ourselves, but to fly a machine.  We spend lots of time and money practicing and learning.  But insects…these little bugs that make up a huge percentage of the global biomass…many of them can fly, and can fly very, very well.  How do they do it?  How did they learn?

 Well, the short answer is that science doesn’t exactly know how to answer those questions.  We know what they do in flight.  We know how muscles move to make the wings beat in whatever patterns are needed.  We can see the acrobatics they can do when needed and necessary.  But when we try to figure out how they know what to do and how they learned, we just don’t know with certainty.

 We tend to say that they are born with that ability.  That they have the instinctive ability to fly.  That somehow the instructions for flight are impressed into their DNA such that those instructions are passed on from parent to offspring.  Instinct is defined as an inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species.  We know that somehow the instructions, so to speak, for flying are somehow passed on from one generation to another.  But we have yet, I believe, to see exactly how that happens.

 Anyone who knows anything about the world around us knows that there are multiple thousands of things such as the ability to fly that are passed on from one generation to the next in virtually every species of plant and animal.  What Science doesn’t know is how this ability to pass on needed behaviors developed and how only certain behaviors are passed on while others are not.

 If you know me, you know where this is going.  No, I don’t know the answers to these questions directly.  But I do know that when there is a creative Mind behind all that we see and know, then there is indeed an answer…this didn’t happen by accident or chance.  This is the product of intelligence…of mind…that makes all of this kind of thing happen.

 I’m not a stupid person.  I have at least average intelligence, am educated, and have over seventy years in this world to look around and see how things work.  For the life of me, I can’t see how all of what we see and know…and all of what we can’t see and don’t know…has come about by blind chance.  From what I can see, chance leads to further disorder and chaos…not increased order and organization.  It seems to me that if there was no intelligence behind what we see and know, then we wouldn’t be here to see it or know it.

 I don’t know about you.  I don’t know what you think about bugs that fly, or even if you’ve thought about that at all.  I don’t know what you think about how insects obtain the ability to fly.  I don’t know what you think about how all that we see and know came into being.  I don’t know if you believe in an Intelligence or a Mind that has put all of this together or not.  I don’t know what you think about instinctive behavior or learned behavior, or any of the myriad of other related topics that we could talk about in this Thought.

 But I know that for me, there is an Intelligence that made it all happen and keeps it going.  And that for me, that Intelligence is the God who calls Himself “I AM WHO I AM.”  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The God who revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth some 2,000 years ago.

 Call me ignorant if you want.  Call me deluded if you want.  Call me brainwashed if you want.  But before you do, I challenge you to look at the evidence…look at it with as unbiased of a frame of mind as you can.

 Then let me know what you have decided.

 Blessings.

Act Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly

 Good morning, and welcome.

 My friend, wife, mom, and author Kendra Broekhuis sends out a monthly email to those who have signed up for it.  It’s called Present Tense…embracing the tensions of faith in everyday life.  In the latest version of the monthly email, she speaks of Micah chapter 6, and especially verse 8…the verse where Micah says the words of God:  He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

 She speaks of the meaning of justice and mercy and the tension and relationship that is apparent between the two.  One of her comments was that where there is a lack of justice, there will be corresponding needs for even greater mercy.

 She has a point.  Think of some of the injustices that you know about in the world you inhabit.  Do you know of people who don’t have enough to eat?  Who want housing, but don’t have it?  Who are dealing with medical issues but don’t have the insurance coverage or the means to pay?  I’m sure you can think of other such issues that people face in their daily lives.  To act justly is to recognize and act upon these situations as we can and are able.

 To love mercy is to go beyond just the simple act of putting a band aid on someone’s hunger or housing situation.  To love mercy is to recognize all the times we’ve been on the receiving end of God’s mercy and compassion, and get into the weeds, so to speak, with those in need.  To do more than just toss a sack of food their way or give a few dollars.  To love mercy is to insert oneself into the messes of others…bearing burdens, wiping tears, and demonstrating the love and mercy of God.

 But when we do this…when we get “down and dirty” with others in their need, we often feel like there is so much need and so little we can do that it seems hopeless to even try.  Kendra addresses that with an analogy where she speaks of a puzzle.  Here’s what she had to say:

 I like the analogy of a puzzle, kind of like the 1,500 piece our family did last week:

 God knows and understands the bigger picture of everything happening today, even when to us it looks like a million pieces in a random pile, and those pieces are flipped upside down, and oh yeah, we lost the box with the picture on it.

One day, He will restore perfect justice and mercy into every piece of this puzzle that is our world.  In the meantime, He invites me to pick even just one piece of that puzzle and find ways to act justly and love mercy within that sphere of influence.  And, He encourages me with the last part of the verse He so kindly added, which is to walk humbly…fueled by the ultimate expression of both justice and mercy, which was Jesus taking up His cross for us.

 I have wrestled with the fact that anything I might be able to do in the way of justice and mercy is but a small drop in a very huge bucket.  I often wonder if I’m making any headway at all, or if the world is indeed any better because I am living in it.  These words from Kendra are helpful, and help me keep my bearings on what I and countless others do every day.

 And, as my friend Jennifer White has said, “I can’t do everything, but I can do something.”  That too is a good way to think of these things.  No, we can’t do everything.  But we can all do something.  I have many times been sustained by this thought.

 I’ve also found helpful the fact that Jesus Himself didn’t heal the world or feed every human being.  He did good deeds as he went along in life and met people on the way.  The blind man.  The man who couldn’t walk.  Others who he met or who came to him.  One.  Person.  At.  A.  Time.

 And that’s what we do as well.  And when we do, we fulfill what God requires…to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with the Lord.

 Blessings.