Desert Flowers

Psalm 111:2

New International Version (NIV)

² Great are the works of the Lord;
    they are pondered by all who delight in them.

This has been the driest year on record for us. We had a few sporadic excuses for rain over the last few months but not enough to make the desert blossom like it can in a rainy year. Then about three weeks ago we had a weekend of rain. It rained slowly, so almost everything soaked into the dry earth.

Two days ago I put Cleo on leash and we took an hour walk into the hills that surround our home. They’re a welcome and refreshing color of green. Once in the desert I let Cleo run where ever she wanted to. She looks for anything to chase, and those are few and many days in between this year. But she loves looking.

As we stepped out into the desert I was able to look around my feet. I counted six different flowering plants there, all small and easily overlooked like the delicate purple filaree. Already the little lances, that we called “clocks” as kids, were pointing skyward. I know it’s an unwelcome import, but it is still a tiny breath of color in the desolate desert.

A little further on is the tall, slender plant with trumpet shaped yellow flowers that some locals call desert wild tobacco plant. It is one of the few plants that seem capable of flowering all through the hottest, driest part of the year. Another is what we call the desert buckwheat which has pleasant bundles of tiny white flowers edged in pink.

Further along the usually dead looking brittle bush was now very showy with hundreds of large daisy like blossoms. As you look closely at these, some plants have gray, almost silver leaves and blossoms of bright yellow with yellow centers; others have more greenish leaves with the same bright yellow blossoms, only their centers are black.

Suddenly in an area covered with dry, dead grass, I came across the delightfully and humorously named blue dicks. They’re a small lily with dark blue flowers that become pinkish as they grow older. These are special because they don’t grow some years. And then up against the rocks I spied peachy-yellow sticky monkey flowers. Try to pick them, and you’ll see where it got the sticky part of its name.

On El Niño years, the hills can be a riot of colors. This year we have to look closely for any flowers. By the time we got back home, we had counted 22 different flowers.

Thank You, Lord, that even here in the harsh desert You nurture beauty to delight us. In the same way nurture our souls in this soul desert of numbing materialism.

Filaree

Wild Tobacco

Desert Buckwheat

Gray Brittle Bush

Green Brittle Bush 

Blue Dick

Yellow Sticky Monkey Flower

Coyotes

Psalm 136:25

Good News Translation (GNT)

He gives food to every living creature;
    his love is eternal.

Sauron was our last cat. The kids named him after J. R. R. Tolkien’s "Dark Lord of Mordor", from The Lord of the Rings series, because he was pitch black and had a feisty attitude towards the world. He was never a lap cat but did his best to keep all of us serving him faithfully. We weren’t enough subjects for him, however. He would leave home for weeks at a time, and we would not see him at all. With a cat door in the back of the house, he came and went as he pleased. About seven years into his dominion in our home, I happened to talk about him to Debbie who was on the same committee I was on. She lived about 3 blocks away from us. She had been feeding a cat that answered to the same description as Sauron, including its collar. Sure enough, he had that family under his sway as well. He would be around there for several weeks and then disappear for weeks. Sometimes he would be at neither of our homes for weeks at a time.

He had a love-hate relation with our dogs. When Brenna, our half malamute, came to live with us, he disappeared. She was enough to scare anyone. Unlike most dogs, she would stare you down with her bright blue eyes set in a black face. But after almost a year, Sauron walked in and reassumed regal dominion over our home.

One time during Brenna’s stay when neither Debbie nor I had seen him for several months, I saw Sauron about a block down the street. He came over and rubbed against my leg. He was very thin and emaciated. Two inches of naked bone stuck out the end of his tail. I picked him up and carried him home. He stuck around for a couple weeks, regained a bit of weight, and disappeared. About two months later he moved back in. His tail was completely healed and shorter. He was fat and sleek and showed evidence that he had life under control. He lived with us on and off until he was about 11 years old. Then he disappeared forever.

We had had several other cats before Sauron, none of whom survived even a year. We placed the blame of their disappearance and Sauron’s wounded tail squarely at the feet of the coyotes that police our street every night of the year. The coyotes are wild and live in the desert hills around our home. They sometimes take cats and small dogs to help supplement their meager diet. I quit keeping cats because I just couldn’t take the emotional loss of fattening them up for the coyotes to kill.

The coyotes usually appear well fed and groomed, arrogant, and even brazen. They earn the title of being wily and shrewd. They are essential to our lives because they live on desert rodents that would quickly become a plague without them. We hear their choruses in the dusk on most evenings. So we and they also have a love-hate relationship. We have reached a compromise that I find totally satisfactory: I keep only big dogs, and they keep down the vermin.

Thank You, Lord, for feeding the coyotes that we actually enjoy seeing and hearing. 

Sabbath a Delight

1 Peter 2:2-3

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

 Like newborn infants, desire the pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it for your salvation since you have tasted that the Lord is good.

While growing up a Seventh-day Adventist I was taught very strict Sabbath observance. Friday afternoon we all took our weekly bath—it was the only time we had hot water in the bathroom. Then we changed our beds, did extra careful pick-up of all our toys, clothes, etc. and cleaned the house until it was immaculate. We polished our shoes and pressed our Sabbath clothes, if necessary. Right at sundown we gathered for worship, which was a longer than usual worship with singing, saying memory verses, and reading from the Bible. If it was a cold evening we would have a roaring fire in the fireplace.

The standard fare for Friday night supper included homemade frosted cinnamon rolls and fruit salad with soup or some other hot dish. We spent the evening playing Bible games or reading spiritual or devotional material.

Sabbath morning we all walked to church where we had Sabbath school and then a preaching service. We always sat on the front row because “Grampa” was hard of hearing, and there was no public address system. Upon leaving church we would race home as fast as we could while the grown-ups stood around talking. Since the house was locked and neither my brother nor I had a key, we would pick the lock or manipulate a window to get in. I think we had figured out about 8 different ways to get into our house when it was locked.

After dinner began the long, long wait until sunset. Usually Dad would take us for a hike up the adjacent mountain. We would pick a wealth of wild flowers in the spring time, but we couldn’t climb trees.. On rather rare occasions we would go down to the ocean. We could take our shoes off and wade in the water, but we were not supposed to get in any deeper than our ankles. We would find rock pools and prick our fingers on the sea urchins, stuff a finger into a sea anemone and let it close around the finger, or try to catch fish or an octopus with our hands. 

We couldn’t swim or ride a bicycle. We couldn’t play any ball game. We would sometimes twist the cowboys and Indians game into an Israelite and Philistine game; then we could be rowdy, but not loud enough to arouse the grown-ups. We certainly were not allowed to listen to the radio, and there was no TV. We couldn’t read secular stories or books nor listen to secular music. We couldn’t take pictures. Rainy days were, of course, the worst since we couldn’t play Monopoly or with our Tinker toys or Erector set. And so the list of restrictions went on and on.

Any time we would ask, “Why can’t we play ball or do something fun?” the stock answer was to quote Isaiah 58:13:  “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: …” Notice that it states twice the restriction against doing our “pleasure.”

For years I pondered over the restriction from doing something pleasurable and still calling the Sabbath a delight. When I was about 30 I bought a copy of The Jerusalem Bible. I read it with interest. Eventually I reached Isaiah 58:13 which read “If you refrain from trampling the sabbath and doing business on the holy day, if you call the sabbath ‘Delightful’, and the day sacred to Yahweh ‘Honourable’, if you honour it by abstaining from travel, from doing business and from gossip, …” I pulled down my Young’s Analytical Concordance. Sure enough! The Hebrew word for pleasure in the KJV was at times translated business elsewhere in the KJV of the Bible. Of course, the business restriction fits in with the Sabbath commandment, whereas pleasure plainly just doesn’t fit. 

Christ summed up the whole thing very succinctly when he said, “The sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Indeed, the “pure spiritual milk” from God’s Word does not cheat us out of getting the full rest, delight, and joy that comes from keeping the Sabbath.

Lord, You’ve given us a marvelous gift in the Sabbath, a gift of joy, relaxation, and healing. Thank You very much!

The Desires of Your Heart

Psalm 37:4

King James Version (KJV)

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

The year was 1959 and I was a senior at Sedaven High School near Johannesburg, South Africa. My parents, missionaries in Southern Rhodesia, had sent me three days by train to this Christian school. I wrote home once a week and in one letter mentioned I had gotten a girl friend.

Mom wrote back “So you got yourself a girlfriend.” She spent a serious paragraph outlining my responsibilities as a boyfriend. She didn’t want me to “use” the girl. She rejoiced in the joys of courtship. She also encouraged me with this verse to keep my connection with the Lord.

Sedaven was not the ideal place to get involved in a courtship. In fact courting was strictly prohibited. Lila lived off campus and was not in my class. So I seldom actually saw her. We exchanged clandestine daily letters. My letters were short and factual and hardly romantic. No copies of them survive to my knowledge. Lila must have spent many hours writing her letters which were long and dripping with honey. There is a story behind those letters. Today I laugh at the experience and how I was totally conned by them. Had I known about it then, I probably would have gotten quite angry. I’ll probably have an occasion to relate this story in another post.

Eventually, like many high school romances, Lila and I drifted apart. We have each established our own homes, and I trust that God has indeed given both of us the desires of our hearts as the text promises.

I kept my mother’s letter in my Bible for years. I actually went looking for it as I wrote this, but it too has drifted away and been lost. But the appropriate wisdom of her comments still remains.

Indeed You do give us the desires of our hearts as we delight in You, O Lord.

Reward

2 Chronicles 15:7

New King James Version (NKJV)

But you, be strong and do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded!”

It had been a long, hot summer. Ken and I worked the whole summer tearing out the rickety old wooden floors of a three story building. The walls were of solid masonry and, short of an earthquake, would stand for a very long time. We found a manufacturer of particle board and got a large supply of seconds from them for a song. We built supports that would hold the weight of concrete as we poured it.

We put the steel reinforcing rods where they were necessary and put in electrical conduit to appropriate points in the building. We poured the concrete. After giving the concrete time to set and cure, we removed the supports.

Ken and I were both teachers. Since there were no classes in the summer time, we were expected to work on campus during the summer. That way we earned our summer wages. That was probably the heaviest summer work I had to do during my teaching career.

I visited the building about two-and-a-half years ago. It is currently the college library and still looks great after 30 years of use. I’m still proud of the work I did there.

You’ve heard that anything can be accomplished as long as it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. During the next academic year Ken was honored highly for his part in the construction and given a generous bonus. He deserved everything that he was awarded. My name was not mentioned. The promise in this text is that, in the sight of God, everyone will be rewarded for work done.

Thank You, Lord, for giving us the privilege to have a part in working in Your kingdom here on earth. Thank You for the promise that You will indeed reward us abundantly for our part.

Prayer in the Classroom

John 7:24

New International Version (NIV)

²⁴ Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

 Teaching mathematics at a Christian university was my career. For years I taught math the same way it had been taught to me. Some teachers would pray at the beginning of their class period, but I knew no mathematician who prayed at the beginning of class.

Many students were jarred out of bed the very last minute by a harsh alarm, dressed hurriedly, and dashed wildly for class. They had no time for breakfast or devotions. So when I taught a class that met during the first period of the day, I would often read a Bible verse, say a few words about why I chose that verse, and have a brief prayer for wisdom for the day. This would only take about 2 or 3 minutes max. From then on it was all mathematics. Over the years I had a number of students that actually mentioned to me that they appreciated the verse and prayer.

 Every year or so administrators urged us to start every class with prayer. I usually remarked to my colleagues that it just seemed out of place in a mathematics classroom. Finally after years of resistance, I decided “Why not give it a bash!” So I started repeating a verse, blurb, and prayer at the beginning of every class, not just first thing in the morning.

Not very long afterward I was summoned to my chair’s office. There had been an angry complaint about my wasting 20 minutes and more of the class period preaching to the students. My chair was very upset and started to demand that I cease and desist. I mentioned that I was merely following the President’s recommendation. I pointed out further that there was no way it was taking 20 minutes of the class period. “Well, time it for the next few days and let me know how long it is taking.”

Of course I knew immediately who had made the complaint. Don (not his real name) was having an extremely difficult time with math and expressed his frustration by criticizing everything that went on. I timed my devotionals, and they took less than four minutes, including reading the roll each day. I also went out of my way to encourage and befriend Don. He had come from a very rough background and had done a stint in the military. We became good friends. I wish I could say that he successfully passed the class. He didn’t, but I stayed in touch with him and encouraged him until he did pass it successfully the next term.

If I were to do my career over again, would I pray at the beginning of every class? Yes! I have evidence there were a number of students who were blessed by the practice. The episode with my chair was simply an attempt by the enemy of all things good to discourage me.

Thank You, Lord, for having the patience to eventually get me to see the wisdom of bringing You into my math classes. Sorry that it takes me so long to implement Your ways instead of mine.

The Heavens Declare

Psalm 19:1 (King James Version)

 ¹The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.

A group of computer science students and I were returning from a computer and electronics show in Las Vegas. All the glitz and glamour, all the high pitched sales force had left us jaded and hungry. We stopped at a buffet in a casino en route home. We stood and watched dozens of gamblers pumping coins into one-armed bandits. Even with all the noise and ringing of the slot machines, we noticed that the gamblers looked numb. Their actions were mechanical—and hopeless.

Our bellies full, we got back into the three cars in which we were caravanning home. The student passengers lay back as best they could in the crowded car and tried to catch some sleep. Back on the freeway we joined a double line of vehicles cruising 80 miles per hour almost bumper to bumper on one of the nation’s busiest rural freeways. For an hour or more we drove through the pitch darkness of the desolate desert, blinded by our own headlights and that of hundreds of other vehicles. The students were silent, still bored by the vast array of electronics we’d seen.

Suddenly I put my turn signal on and pulled off of the freeway up one of those off ramps that end up on a gravel pad and a deserted cross road. The other two cars followed me. Pulling onto the gravel and turning off the lights I got out of the car. Several got out with me. “What’s wrong? Why’d you stop way out here?”

Silently I let them quiz me for a couple minutes, allowing our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally I said quietly, “Look up!” as I looked skyward. One by one they looked up to see what I was looking at. Then in voices hushed with awe, they expressed utter amazement.

We all stood there. The college students were talking excitedly now. It was obvious that what they were seeing impressed them far more than the millions of dollars worth of technology that they had been looking at all day. Most of these students had grown up in the city and had never seen the Milky Way before. I pointed out some of the familiar constellations, stars, and planets. Maybe ten thousand pinpoints of light shone back at us in that vast waste land.

“How do you know which is which?” they wondered out loud.

“They’re my friends!” I responded simply.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for declaring your glory and your love through your infinitely vast creation beyond the firmament.

Faith and the Sword

Hebrews 11:33-34

New International Version (NIV)

³³ who through faith conquered kingdoms, … [who] escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength.

Elisha Luyeho, a short, slight man was trained as a mathematician. He was naturally retiring and did his best to dodge conflict. I met Elisha at Andrews University where both he and I were mathematics majors and both from Africa. We struck up a friendship that lasted until his death a couple of years ago.

Elisha became principal of Ikizu Secondary School and Seminary where I was teaching in 1971. This was the beginning of a very turbulent time in Tanzanian education. The government had nationalized most schools very shortly after independence in 1961. The Adventist mission alone lost over 140 schools. Schools like Ikizu that had not taken any financial help from the government were not taken over.

When Idi Amin executed a violent coup in next door Uganda, the government of Tanzania became very edgy. It decided to nationalize all educational institutions. But it didn’t want to get an international reputation of arbitrarily doing this. So it sent political agitators onto campus twice a week. These agitators were minor politicians who would call together all of the students and harangue them for over an hour. The obvious, though unstated, objective was to get the students to riot. Then in the name of order and decency, the government could take over the school.

Under this pressure things got very tense in our school and the schools of other mission organizations. Elisha believed firmly in Jesus Christ and His mission to spread Christianity to Africa and Tanzania in particular. He remained totally calm under this mounting pressure. I vividly remember sitting in joint meetings with the faculty where these politicians made all kinds of unreasonable demands on the school. But Elisha would quietly and firmly resist their pressure with unanswerable arguments. At the time I marveled, and still marvel, at the inner strength, faith, and fortitude of Elisha and the vice-principal, Elinihaki Tuvako.

At times, when Elisha would go into the government office of education in nearby Musoma, thugs would physically beat him up. Sore and bruised he would return to Ikizu, his faith and determination strong. One evening agents arrived on campus to arrest him and very probably take his life. He was off campus at a meeting with the school board that day, so, having been warned, early the next morning before the agents got up he fled the country. He had to live in a neighboring country for the next twenty years to escape their determined revenge.

The government never did manage to take over the school, and relations have long since been normalized.

Thank You, Lord, for the example of these men of faith and how You supported them and will support us as we need it.