Everything is New

 

[1]

2 Corinthians 5:17 Contemporary English Version

¹⁷ Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.

 

This is a new year. I have had serious reservations about what this year 2025 would bring. Our country has been divided worse than anytime since the Civil War. Only time will tell whether we can ride the crest of this wave or be drowned by it. The past is indeed being swept aside.

On the other hand, life rolls on. We have a water leak in our front yard that threatens to drain the Colorado River dry. But we will take care of that. We have a Better Than 50 Club meeting in a mere fortnight. But members will rise to the occasion. My computer, on which I am typing this, is showing more and more serious signs of rolling over and playing dead. But my brother gave me a little computer for Christmas.

When I say little, I mean tiny: it is less than 3½ inches square and 1½ inches high (less than 9 x 9 x 4 cm) Yet it is 500,000 times more powerful than the computer I used during my doctoral research at the University of Iowa that occupied a whole floor of one of the large buildings on campus, and had dozens of people running it. In less than an hour I transferred onto it more than 100,000 times the total capacity of data that IBM 360 could hold.

I am already polishing off the final chapter of my Ikizu Memoirs book on this Ace Magician. And, yes, with Sylvia’s help we have all but completed the equatorial African experience of our lives, so that part of our past is history and forgotten only in the sense that we no longer are living it.

God has had His hand in our lives through out our whole existence. We are definitely new persons, but in this case “new” includes “old” in it! Yesterday my Standard 1 grade school teacher Ruth (Miss Hurlow) Webster and her husband Eric came by our home. She will be 100 years old this year. I had found some pictures of their wedding (in 1950) that my dad had in his collection and gave them to her. I was in Standard 1 (= Grade 3) that year!

Thank You, Lord, for making us new persons—we look forward to the finished product when You come again.

Here is a wedding picture of Eric and Ruth Webster in 1950

 

---

[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51pmHZlGyaL._AC_SX679_.jpg

Happy New Year 2025

 

[1]

Psalm 25:4-5 Good News Translation

⁴ Teach me your ways, O Lord;
    make them known to me.
⁵ Teach me to live according to your truth,
    for you are my God, who saves me.

 

This is my prayer for 2025. God has certainly led me in 2024—sometimes in paths I didn’t really want to go, and sometimes in desirable paths that I would not have chosen without His leading. Usually, I have chosen my own ways, and He has either gone with me or tolerated my wandering. In our Christmas letter, which I have posted on this Blogspot (https://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com/), I mention occasions where I sensed God’s leading in a compelling way.

When I was a kid in academy (high-school), I was taught that I had a guardian angel who accompanied me where ever I went. I was taught that he kept a “notebook” at hand and wrote down everything I did, i.e. he was the Gestapo who was always trying to trap me in my misbehaviors. If I went into unsavory places like a bioscope (cinema), a bar, or a nightclub, he would wait outside for me to come out. If I died in such a place, the devil made off with my soul, grinning from ear to ear; my guardian angel would then weep for me.

In my current considerations, I believe that I do have a guardian angel who does his best to guard me against sin, harm, and danger. I also believe there is a rogue angel with me who is out to destroy me at all cost and sometimes has my ear. A major chore of the guardian is to thwart the rogue’s evil attempts. I do not believe that my guardian angel is there to spy on me. Christ promised in John 3:17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its savior.” (GNT) Christ’s own testimony is that His is a purpose of love and salvation.

So, in 2025, may I and you start each day reminding ourselves that we have limitless sources available for our boon and to preserve us from the bane.

Thank You, Lord, for exercising Your mighty power and Your infinite wisdom on our behalf at all times!

Happy New Year!

 

 

Labels: #California, #ie, #inlandempire, #boon, #bane, #guardianangel, #rogueangel, #gestapo, #bioscope, #cinema, #nightclub, #bar, #Christmasletter, #judgement, #danger, #harm, #sin, #academy, #highschool, #chore, #Christ, #God

---

[1] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1821856644/12-png-happy-new-year-2025-clipart-new?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_all&utm_custom1=_k_Cj0KCQiAyc67BhDSARIsAM95Qzta83Tfg9uwX6B5xW1kXAIRKCWHUCo8sP0LhThav8EDOjJdAbyiHg8aAmZvEALw_wcB_k_&utm_content=go_21500569332_164907277083_707558291651_pla-293946777986_c__1821856644_5362917685&utm_custom2=21500569332&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyc67BhDSARIsAM95Qzta83Tfg9uwX6B5xW1kXAIRKCWHUCo8sP0LhThav8EDOjJdAbyiHg8aAmZvEALw_wcB

Hold Out to the End

 

[1]

Matthew 24:12-13 Good News Translation

¹² Such will be the spread of evil that many people's love will grow cold. ¹³ But whoever holds out to the end will be saved.

.

 

While a student at Andrews University, I discovered the joys of being in an academic environment. Many of the students had interests in all kinds of things; curiosity was popular and encouraged. I had discovered the fulfilment that came from picking up languages. In high school I learned Afrikaans and could speak it fluently. Then as a sophomore in college, I found myself at Seminar Marienhöhe sweating to learn German. By the end of the semester, I was speaking it fairly easily. At the end of that semester, my brother Elwood and I were shipping out to the States through Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From a Bbile Society booth, I picked up the gospel of Mark in Dutch. Totally unaware of the pitfalls of language, I spent several weeks reading the gospel and, using my Afrikaans to understand the meanings of the words, wrote up a grammar for Dutch and felt pretty good about knowing the language. When I got to Holland, I quickly discovered that I had done well and understood all that was being spoken. However, it took a couple days to pin down the fact that the Dutch I had taught myself so diligently was very old fashioned. It was like King James English—understandable, but totally outdated. The gospel I had used was probably the Statenvertaling of the Bible and was published in 1637! However, by the end of four days, I was getting around very well in modern Dutch.

At Andrews the Greek scholar, Leona Running, announced that she would be teaching New Testament Greek on Friday evenings in the Seminary Chapel. As a kid I had spent a lot of time delving into various historical fonts and knew the Greek alphabet very well. So, I showed up to the Seminary Chapel and got myself a seat near the front. The chapel filled up so there was standing room only as Dr. Running began her first lecture. She had me enthralled. I observed, in total surprise, that over the next ten weeks there were significantly fewer attendees at each meeting. For the last few meetings there were only about four of us attending. Prof. Running was not surprised.

About ten years later, I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa working on my PhD in mathematics. I was toying with going to teach math at Middle East College in Beirut, Lebanon. Two Egyptian students at the university announced a “class” in Egyptian Arabic. I signed up and made excellent progress in Arabic. Again, I noticed the same phenomenon as in the Greek class. The first meeting or two we had a huge class, but towards the end there were only a handful of people who were still coming. I did not go to Lebanon; instead, I went to Helderberg College in South Africa. However, I’ve often wondered how I would have done with Egyptian Arabic in Lebanon. As it is, I never used the Arabic and so have forgotten it, except for some cognates of Swahili words I had learned during five years teaching math and learning Swahili in Tanzania.

In Biblical stories, remember Noah’s Ark? I have a feeling that when Noah started building it, he had a large number of helpers. However, as more than a century went by, many helpers’ love or enthusiasm grew cold, and they deserted him. Eventually only three of his sons, and he probably had many, entered the ark with their wives and were saved. Most of the antediluvial patriarchs started their families during their first or second centuries, whereas Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth were all born around the beginning of his seventh century. Very likely he had other children during his younger years, but they never went into the ark to be saved. That must have been tragic for Noah and his wife.

Christ was aware of our human nature to start things but then give up along the way. Hence His encouragement in our text.

Continue to remind me, Lord, that I must hang in there with You, or all of our cooperation of effort will be in vain.

 

[1] https://blissfulroad.com/the-importance-of-persistence-in-achieving-your-goals/

Clarke's Christmas Letter in 2024

 

Christmas 2024

 

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Uni took the picture above at Thanksgiving this year. Our Thanksgiving was celebrated with Fred and Uni in Riverside. In our picture, David and Julia Zuckerman are standing, Uni and Fred Clarke are on the floor trying to get Oso to look at the camera. On the couch we have Craig and Esther Kinzer sitting next to Sylvia and Wil Clarke with Katie (or Catherine the Great) lying on Oso’s bed. Our whole family was together! Our dogs even made it, but on account of their consideration, the cat and rats stayed at their respective homes. Our kids made the food including dessert. They asked us to bring the drinks. Thank you, kids, for your consideration for the old folks!

A website called NaNoWriMo tends to build a fire under me to keep writing, even when it’s inconvenient. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writers’ Month = November, and any genre (not just novels) is grist for their mill. It helped me get all but the last chapter or two of my book about our experience in Tanzania (1967-1971) written. It is in memoir form. I should really say our book because Sylvia has put a lot of time into it, too. I hope that before next year at this time, we will have the printed book in hand.

You may remember that there was an eclipse of the sun back in August, 2017. I was still recovering from West Nile Virus, and that prevented me from traveling to see it. So we laid plans to see the eclipse this year (April 2024), the only other total eclipse visible from the U.S. until 2044 (at which time I would be 102 years old, if I lived that long.) Julia, who works at Cal. Tech., figured out that Torreon, Mexico, would have the best possible chance of clear skies. So we flew there in April. We rented a car that was supposed to seat six people. Herz cheated us and gave us an SUV that only seated five. There were six people in our group: Julia, David, Fred, Uni, Sylvia and I. Almost everybody on our plane was going to Torreon, Mexico, to see the eclipse, so there were no other cars in the area from any rental company. Uni volunteered to sit in the back facing backward. Thank you, Uni! The skies were cloudy in Torreon, so we drove for over an hour to Durango and had a wonderful view of the eclipse. Watching the total eclipse gave me an amazing, unexpected emotional high. We are grateful to our children for making this possible.

We travelled east again this summer. My cousin Fred’s wife passed away around Thanksgiving last year, and my primary goal for the trip was to attend her funeral in June. (Because the ground freezes in northern Michigan during the winter, they delayed the funeral

until June.) An advantage of attending funerals is that it is usually accompanied by a family reunion. It is a foretaste of the grand family reunion we will have when Christ comes. I’m counting on you to attend that one with me! Thank You, Jesus!

          On Lincoln Highway in Wyoming

A couple years ago two young people phoned me from Ontario, Canada, They had done some research and wanted to write a historical novel about my mother, Esther. I asked them how much they knew about her, and Nolan sent me a document close to 50 pages long of stuff they had found on line! I was stunned. We spent a few weeks on and off, talking on the phone about her, and I tried to give them an idea of the human side of her life. So I set another goal to stop and see these two, Nolan and Sarah.

I had a frustrating time trying to get a time when we could all three meet. Nolan and Sarah live about 150 miles apart. While I was in Michigan and Ohio, I just couldn’t get it to work and couldn’t get hold of Nolan by phone, I finally prayed to the Lord to have Nolan phone me. That was about 10:00 one night when Sylvia and I were sleeping in the bed of our pickup. The Lord usually doesn’t answer me with such alacrity. But 2:00 a.m. my cell phone rang, and Nolan promised to make all the arrangements. I was stunned that God had chosen to answer my petition so soon! After the phone call, I lay back and laughed just like Abraham and his wife laughed when God promised to give them their son, Isaac. It is an astounding event when the almighty God chooses to answer you personally. We had a tremendous get together the next Sabbath in St. Thomas, Ontario. We were delighted to meet both of their families. Now I’m eagerly awaiting the fictional story of my mother’s life from their computers!

We had originally planned to come home via Washington State and see Sylvia’s brother Judson. However, a sequence of events brought us home pretty much along I-40, which doesn’t go anywhere within half a country from them. So in August we outlined a detailed plan that would take us north to Washington to see Judson and a number of our other family members and friends.

    At Pumpkin Rock near home

Sylvia and I are now both octogenarians, so the morning we left home, I said to the Lord, “You know, Lord, I haven’t really talked to You about our trip. Please give us a safe trip, and if You think we shouldn’t go, please let us know, and we’ll turn around and come home.” The temperature was well above 105º (40°C), but we made good time. We were driving our car this time, and it has a better A/C, than the pickup. At 168 miles (270 km) from home along US 395, we stopped at a rest area.

Before taking off from there, I pulled out a map and studied it a bit. My cell phone rang, and my ENT (otolaryngologist) said, “I just got your culture back, and you have a staph infection. Find the nearest hospital and go to the emergency room and get treatment.” He was sure they would admit me. Not wanting to be in the hospital out there in the desert—if there were one to by found—I realized that the Lord was telling me to turn around. At about 9:00 p.m. I pulled into the Riverside Community Hospital. They indicated they wanted to keep me there. However, by about 2:00 a.m., they sent me home with a prescription. A couple weeks later, my ENT did surgery on my sinuses, and the staph has disappeared. Thank You, Lord, for taking a personal interest in my well-being and Dr. de Jager for following up on my condition.

One of the major reasons for going to Washington State was to see my cousin Eugene. He was in a precarious condition health-wise, and I really wanted to see him again. However, that was not to be. He passed away a couple months later. If I had driven north, I would have probably seen him, but there may have been two funerals instead of just his. My brother, Elwood, helped me financially to fly up to Eugene’s funeral.

Sylvia is celebrating her retirement by taking voice lessons from a voice teacher she found in Loma Linda, CA. She has sung in choirs on and off ever since before we were married and got a lot of training there. However, she never had the opportunity to take personal voice lessons, before. She is really enjoying the training. She has performed in a couple concerts recently including singing “The Holy City”, a musical ballad composed in 1892 by Michael Maybrick (alias Stephen Adams) and text by Frederic Weatherly. Needless to say, I’m mighty proud of her! This season she has laid some plans to take groups singing carols in the neighborhood especially for people who are shut-ins. You’re welcome to come and join her.

“The Inlandia Institute is a lively center of literary activity serving the 29,000 sq. mile inland Southern California Region”. Sylvia and I have benefited and been benefitted by the Institute. I have been an Inlandia Writing Workshop leader for four years now. I started doing this after the untimely death of Ms. Celena Bumpus, who was our leader for years before she passed away at the beginning of 2021. I have neither the creativity nor the wide knowledge she had. But our group is producing excellent material. Both Sylvia and I enjoy meeting with our group, Celena’s Scribes, and with Rose Mongé’s Memoir Writing Group. Rose spends a lot of time preparing for her group. She even publishes an annual writing anthology. Both Sylvia and I contributed some articles to what Rose calls Writing Warriors: Time Passages this year. Sylvia also has seven pages and I have six pages in the 2023 anthology, Writing From Inlandia, published last month. Besides my Tanzania memoir that I am finishing up, I also have a devotional blog I call “Experiencing a Bible Verse,” and I encourage you to check it out at https://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com/  I have not published as many blogs this year as previous years. Let’s just attribute that to my slowing down as the years go by.

We wish you a blessed and merry Christmas this year and pray for a powerful and prayerful 2025. It appears to us that things may be winding up for the spectacular coming of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We can rejoice to meet Him in person.

 

Love,

Wil & Sylvia Clarke

5547 Wentworth Dr.

Riverside, CA 92505

Wil’s cell: 951-231-5402

E-mail: wil.clarke@gmail.com

Erase our home phone if you have it

 

 

 

 

Sleep, Peace, and Lions

[1]

Psalm 4:8 King James Version

⁸ I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.

 

I love the majestic English of the King James Version of the Bible, don’t you? I read Psalm 4 this morning, and it reminded me of an incident in our Tanzanian experience and also of Rose, our fearless leader, who assigned us the prompt: “Write about the blessings you have in your life.” During this NaNoWriMo month, I am trying to whip my Ikizu Memoirs into final or at least semi-final form. I am on chapter 53 of 58 planned chapters. Sylvia is my editor, and she recently sent me chapter 41 entitled Lion Encounter.

On Sunday night we were camping with our group in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Serengeti National Park. In our tent we had our one-year-old daughter and the three Conway children, too. I awoke in the predawn to the sound of something dropping onto the roof of our tent. Deciding it must be a small branch from the tree we had pitched under, I turned over to go back to sleep. Suddenly, George’s shout: “Get out of here!” from the next tent, shocked me into action. Grabbing a flashlight, I jumped up and raced to the door of the tent, unzipped it, and shone the flashlight out into the darkness.

I stopped dead. Frozen. Not ten feet were the shining eyes of two lions staring back at me. There was nothing between me and two lions! They lay between me and the campfire. Time stretched out. The lions watched me but made no move. I remained still. Slowly, I swung the light of the flashlight in a wider arc. There were at least seven lions around our campfire, staring at me. Their eyes roved a bit to my right. There was George, clad only in his briefs, standing frozen in his doorway—and more lions.

I yelled to wake up the others in the group. Two teenagers sleeping in an old Land Rover looked out their windows. They started the Land Rover, and it backfired into action. All the noise was disturbing the lions’ tranquility. Slowly they got up and stretched. Regally, thirteen lions filed out of our campsite. There was no hurry, no obvious fear in their attitude, maybe only a bit of disgust.

No one got any more sleep. When daylight arrived and we got up to eat breakfast, on the roof of our tent we found two dusty lion footprints. Conversation centered around whether or not the lions were hungry. Two or three miles down the track towards the park headquarters in Seronera, we came upon our thirteen lions, busily polishing off two Thompson Gazelles. That ended the discussion about the lions’ lack of hunger.

This morning, my gratitude extends from not being devoured by lions then to an almost complete Ikizu Memoir now. Rejoice with me!

How grateful we are, Lord, that we can lie down and sleep because of the assurance that You make us dwell in safety.

 

 

 

---

[1] https://www.instagram.com/elmarvn/p/CqPs67XKbTg/

Dog Walking and Terror

 

[1]

Psalm 4:8 American Standard Version (ASV)

⁸ In peace will I both lay me down and sleep; For thou, Jehovah, alone makest me dwell in safety.

Cleo, our German shepherd-Labrador mix, and I had a routine that we went through every night. If I forgot one thing, she refused to do the next thing. When it was bedtime, she got restless. She sighed heavily, then came over and lay down where ever I was sitting. Finally, I’d take the hint and go to the coat closet and fetch her leash, a small flashlight, and a plastic bag for her indiscretions. Then we walked across the street and out into the desert beyond.

The desert is always solitary and indeed deserted. The city lights are ever close, so our stroll was never in the deep darkness of the desert a long way beyond us. But enough stars are actually visible to make out the constellations. The planets do indeed wander through the background of stars beyond. At the time, Saturn was bright in the sky and had been sneaking up on Spica for several months.

Often coyotes were singing to the moon all around us. On occasion we even saw one watching us boldly or slinking slyly away. Cleo was a bit larger than even the largest coyotes, and she has a great love of chasing them. I would slip her leash loose and watch her eagerly give chase. She was far too old and fat and slow to get too close. But she loved it, and the coyotes seem to love it, too. As they got to a “safe” distance, they would stop, turn around, and watch her, sort of egging her on.

One time, years before Cleo was born, I was walking Brenna, another of our line of dogs, when a woman appeared from the south with a couple dogs in tow. She was surprised or even shocked by my appearance. Our dogs were on leash, so there was no potential dog fighting.

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry. I promise I’ll never come out here again!” She was overcome with fear.

“Don’t worry,” I answered. “You’re not doing anything wrong and certainly in no danger. I like to walk my dog here, too.”

“Please let me go!” she pleaded. In her terror, she continued verbally groveling, making very little sense in what she said.

I was surprised by her attitude. I, an old man, was certainly not threatening her. I was at least twenty yards from her when she saw me and was not even walking towards her, let alone pursuing her. That she lived in fear was evident in everything she said and in every movement she made. She turned and hastened back towards the houses and streets.

Thank You, Lord, for a feeling of safety and that every night we both lie down and sleep.

 

 

---

[1] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP._6oRDiZBYfh4V7VuUe_VIAHaEb%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=67572bdf60898b97f1494ba51058ec7f616bc3670dd0efaa2216ac2d1c5e8393&ipo=images

Do Not Forgive!

 

[1]

John 20: 23 Good News Translation

³ If you forgive people's sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

 

For 27 years I worked with a man who remembered every mistake or imagined mistake I had ever made and freely reminded me of all of them every time he took me to task about another imagined transgression. He often spent 40 minutes and more recounting everything I had done, or he had at least accused me of doing. At times I would leave the office, blood pressure sky high, shaking with rage. I began to fear that I would die of a heart attack from his merciless accusations.

In the Lord’s prayer He admonishes us, 

“Forgive us the wrongs we have done,
              as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us[2].”

Then He elaborates on this, lest people think that by giving us the power to forgive or to retain people’s sins we actually have the power to save or condemn them. Instead, He is pronouncing judgement on the person who refuses to forgive. He makes that crystal clear in his caveat immediately following the prayer:

“If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”[3]

Throughout the centuries the Christian church has chosen to not forgive people their sins and to torture them mercilessly, even burning them alive or locking them in foul dungeons for years. Its leaders have claimed that Christ gave them that power in John 20:23. They have ignored Christ’s statement about not forgiving those who are unforgiving—those who abuse that power.

And now, the rest of the story of my merciless accuser. I started seriously praying for the salvation of my accuser. As time went by, he left off his accusations and became my strong supporter. I didn’t realize it at the time, but by praying for his welfare, I was indeed forgiving him for his accusations. This resulted in my having a much more tranquil, healthy, and productive life. Christ never did say, “You don’t need to forgive them!” in spite of the accompanying picture.

Dear heavenly Father, give me the grace to forgive others.

 

---

[1] https://rockchurchfargo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/You-dont-need-to-forgive-them.jpg

[2] Matthew 6:12 GNT

[3] Matthew 6:14, 15 GNT