January 29,
2025
Happy New Year—The Year of the Snake!
Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
Psalm 1: 1-3
Psalm
121:5-6 King
James Version
5 The Lord is thy keeper:
the Lord is thy shade upon
thy right hand.
6 The sun shall
not smite thee by day,
nor the moon by night.
Our family moved to Solusi, Southern Rhodesia, in 1954 when
I was 12 years old, and living in tropical Africa was a brand-new experience
for me. When we arrived, well-meaning folks warned me, “You are red-headed,
blue eyed, and pink skinned. You had better wear a hat all the time you are
outside, or you’ll have a sunstroke for sure!” A stroke sounded pretty bad to
me. My grandfather had died from a stroke just days before we moved, so I
started wearing a hat often when I went outside.
The E. B. Jewels, second generation missionaries at Solusi, decided
to retire in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, so they bought a bungalow on
Khami Road west of Bulawayo near Solusi. Their son Laverne and I were good
friends, and they invited me over to help whip the neglected yard into shape.
We worked all morning in the tropical sun. I wore a hat as per instructions. By
lunch time, I started throwing up, had a fever, and was feeling extremely
exhausted. Mrs. Jewel was a nurse and suspected I had gotten a sunstroke. She
rushed me off to the Bulawayo hospital, and they gave me an IV to combat my
dehydration. I felt miserable but recovered readily enough.
In 1967 when Sylvia and I arrived at Ikizu in Tanzania, a degree
or so off the equator, I knew that I had better wear a hat. My picture as I
left the airplane shows me wearing one. I think that was the last time I wore a
hat at Ikizu. For five years, I usually dressed in short pants, a T-shirt, and
sandals locally made from an old car tire. I decided that the only time I had
gotten a sunstroke was when I wore a hat. I figured out that the hat must have been
the cause. I relied on the Lord’s promise that He would be my shade, and that
while I was doing His business, He would protect me. He did.
Gracious God, thank You, for being our keeper and
shielding us from catastrophes all around us.
[1]
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Inspirational-Images/large/Psalms_121-5.jpg
Matthew
10:16 Contemporary
English Version
16 I am sending you like lambs into a pack
of wolves. So be as wise as snakes and as innocent as doves.
When Dad was teaching at Helderberg College, we lived in one
of their houses across the valley from the college. It was one of a row of five
houses nestled in a peach orchard. On occasion the farm manger, Lionel Webster,
would have the ground ploughed between the peach trees to keep the weeds down.
On those occasions I would set out, barefoot, through the freshly ploughed
clods to my friend John Raitt who lived next door. I would take frequent, short steps and
trample out a path we could use to visit each other.
On one such occasion, I came across a small snake. Much like
young Gerald Durrell on Corfu, I was enamored by the wealth of plants and
wildlife that flourished in the Western Cape of South Africa. I already knew
about many of the venomous African snakes such as puff adders, cobras, and
boomslangs. I didn’t even think of these snakes as I leaned over and picked
this snake up by the tail. This one was clearly not one of those poisonous
serpents.
I held it up by the tail, intrigued by three lumps under its
skin, each about a handsbreadth apart from the other. The snake’s head was well
off the ground, even though I was only about seven years old. I held it out at
arm’s length and watched, entranced, as the little lumps slid slowly down the snake’s body towards
its head. Suddenly the naked, slime covered, pink body of a baby mouse came out
of the snake’s mouth and dropped gently to the ground. This tiny pink, furless
mouse was galvanized into immediate action. It raced towards the nearest dark
gap under the clods and disappeared from sight. Looking back at the snake I was
delighted to see a second lump materialize into another naked pink body that
also disappeared under the clods. The third lump followed suit.
I dropped the snake and knelt on the soft ground to see what
had happened to the baby mice. They had totally disappeared. I have long since
wondered how they could have lived in the body of a snake for who knows how
long with no air and whether they died because they had no fur and so dried up
into a frizzle or actually survived and lived the normal life of a mouse.
I also can’t help but think of how Satan is often compared
to a snake. He wanders around doing his best to gobble up innocent souls. Then,
sometimes, along comes a messenger of God and releases the soul to give it
another chance at life. If we are fortunate to be released, do we dash away
from Satan's fearsome grip?
Thank You, Lord, for freeing us from the pitiless clutch
of Satan and aiding us as we dash away!
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
