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

 

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

Enthusiasm, Even for Work

 

[1]

Colossians 3:23 Holman Christian Standard Bible

²³ Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men,

 

In high school I was required to do somewhere between 4 and 8 hours of physical work a week. My first year there I worked for my math teacher Ken Thomas. He had created a little industry making honey frames to go in bee hives. With very primitive equipment he set up a mass production system that taught me quite a bit. He left at the end of the year, and I have no recollection of what I did for physical work my last two years. I assure you I had no enthusiasm for what I was doing. Part of that was that we got paid a tickey an hour. That was the equivalent of about 3¢ an hour. Even in those days that was a total insult to anybody. When my mother learned about it, she was furious, “I can’t even get you work clothes at that rate!” she fumed.

When I went to college at Andrews University, my whole attitude had changed. I shopped around at various work opportunities and found very little that would fit in my schedule. The head of custodial, Art Davis, saw me vainly searching for work: “I’ll give you work” he offered. I jumped for it. The next Sunday I reported for work. There was a call for all students to help reap ornamental gourds on the farm, so Mr. Davis sent a bunch of us over to help the university farm. They had planted a whole field of these pretty little fall decorative items.

I grabbed a bag and started picking all the good ones. It was back-breaking work because the gourds were all on small vines close to the ground. But I worked cheerfully and with enthusiasm. I didn’t realize that some people were watching the whole group of us who were doing this. Word got back to Mr. Davis. When I reported for work the next day, I discovered I had not only a job but also a friend in Mr. Davis. He told me he appreciated my enthusiasm and work ethic. He gave me the best paying jobs on campus and enabled me to pay my own way through college until I graduated.

I confess that the thought had not entered my head that I was doing this for the Lord. But over the next few years, I discovered that a lot of the bosses I had were not like Mr. Davis. They wanted to get the absolute most out of me and pay me the absolute least they could get away with. After the first year of full-time teaching and abuse, I said to my wife, Sylvia, “I have decided that I am working for the Lord, but humans are paying me. I will continue to work for the Lord.” She concurred with me. God saw to it that I always had a job and, although I never got rich, things went better and better for me and my family. I gained a lot of satisfaction from my work, and now we are comfortably retired. Praise the Lord!

Thank You, Lord, for prospering us and for giving us a satisfying life.

 

 

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[1] https://www.ebpsupply.com/blog/how-to-use-floor-buffer-vs-burnisher

The Glory of the Stars

Psalm 23:4

King James Version

⁴ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;

 

On his 85^th birthday, Grampa suffered a stroke. He deteriorated gradually until in his fifth week, he lapsed into a coma. He had become a very good friend of mine. Two years before, I had become very interested in the stars and astronomy. Dad taught at Helderberg College in South Africa, and the college librarian, Mrs. Gorle was a friend of our family, so she welcomed me into the library as a full-fledged member. I methodically read book after book in the astronomy section of the library. Grampa watched me reading these books.

Concerned, he said to me one day, “What are you reading?”

Enthusiastically I told him what I knew about the stars and planets.

“You know,” he said, “Stars are only balls of gas; they’re not really important to your life. You’re just wasting your time.”

This didn’t deter me; my interest had been piqued. One day I came home with a book entitled Astronomy and the Bible, published, if I remember correctly, about 1905. Interested, as usual in what I was reading, he picked it up and read the title. Then he leafed through the book. He had the habit of studying the Bible every day, and the title caught his interest.

“Mind if I borrow this?” He asked.

“Go right ahead, Grampa!” I encouraged him

He disappeared into his room and read it from cover to cover. The fascination of astronomy had caught him, too. Now he was competing with his ten-year old grandson to get the next astronomy book from the library. One day he came back with a brand-spanking-new copy of The Glory of the Stars, by Merlin L Neff, that the library had just put on their shelves. I was super excited and not a little jealous that he had found it before I did. We both read it and had a lot to talk about together.

Now, not much more than a year later, he lay in his bed dying. One morning he woke up from the coma. People gathered around, and visited with them on a one-by-one basis. Then he asked for me. I went in. He was as lucid as he had always been, although he was very weak. “Wilton, as you can see, I’m dying. Promise me that you will see me again in heaven.”

I promised. I was not yet a baptized Christian, but I promised and meant it. He died later on that day.

By your grace only, Lord, I am relying on You to help me keep that promise. And I ask you, Dear Reader, to make that same promise!

 

 

He Endured Opposition

[i]

 Hebrews 12:3

Common English Bible

³ Think about the one who endured such opposition from sinners so that you won’t be discouraged and you won’t give up.

 

It was not in my job description, which was to teach science and mathematics. Yet, the maintenance of the entire school plant, including teacher’s homes, fell on my shoulders. I was working upwards of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Believe it or not, I thrived under the regimen. I still found some time to read and to chat with my wife. Without a vehicle of any kind, we were stuck on the mission, so this brought no variation to my activities.

One year under a new principal, however, things came to a head. He liked to micromanage everything. He would ask me to do something. I would get my workers (students) working on the project and then go and do other pressing things. On occasion he would visit the project while I was away and demand that the workers do something different. When I returned to check on progress, I would find them tearing down what they had done. Stunned, I asked why. They would look a bit confused and then tell me the principal had told them to. When I spoke to him, he would say simply, “I want it done a different way.”

When I disciplined a student in my class, he sometimes reversed the discipline but never told me. Then in front of the class, the student would inform me that the principal had told him that what he was doing was okay. This, of course, had a serious effect on the decorum of the class.

Then one of my student helpers forgot to add more oil into a diesel engine, that powered our water pump, I was in charge of. The lack of oil severely damaged the crankshaft of the engine. The cost of a replacement crankshaft cost more than half the replacement of the entire engine. I reported our problem to the principal. He showed up the next day with a mechanic he had hired from town. He introduced him to me: “Now here is a real mechanic. You go down and see how he fixes it!”

“Good!” I said, “But no real mechanic wants an amateur looking over his shoulder.” I didn’t remind him that fixing things was not part of my job description and that I was doing this merely to save the school a lot of money. The “real” mechanic put some shims in the bearings and ran the engine. It died within eight hours. Then he told the principal, “The only way to fix the engine is a new crankshaft or a new engine. The principal was careful to never mention the event to me again. We parted as friends.

I guess I was discouraged. I gave up and turned in my letter of resignation. This scared the principal. He came to me personally and begged me to stay the two more months to the end of the school term. Then a new principal would take over, and he was going to another job.

Because I was working so much, I had not kept my eyes on the One who had suffered continual opposition and died on account of it. I did not give up but stayed on for a couple more years, until my tour of duty was over. That year was merely preparation for my final year when the opposition came not from the administration but from other directions. That time I was prepared and kept my eyes on Jesus Christ and finished in triumph.

In this current age when a raging pandemic threatens to destroy our lives and an enemy threatens to destroy our democracy, Lord, we rest our future in Your capable, loving hands!

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[i] https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:Im201402DL-Lister1930s-2cyl.jpg

 

Older but not Discouraged

 

[i]

2 Corinthians 4:16 

Good News Translation (GNT)

¹⁶ For this reason we never become discouraged. Even though our physical being is gradually decaying, yet our spiritual being is renewed day after day.

 

When I was in my thirties and forties, I would look in the mirror and say to myself, “You don’t look like you’ve aged at all.” Being a teacher, my students wouldn’t let me get away with that for even a second. One look at me told them I was way out of their league, and they had subtle and not so subtle ways of letting me know it, too. Now, at twice that age, I look in the mirror and wonder who that old guy with sparse white hair is who is looking back at me.

A couple years ago I bumped into a fellow math teacher from another university. I asked him how he was. He smiled and said, “Great! I’m retired and loving it.”

“Why did you retire?” I quizzed.

“When I saw that it was literally taking me twice as long to take care of the paperwork on my desk than it used to, I decided it was time to retire.” He said this in all seriousness.

“I understand all too well,” I empathized.

As I look back at my teaching methods early on, I sometimes shudder. I treated my students the same way my teachers had treated me. I’m aware that I sometimes was too harsh on them. I like to think that I became a more caring person as I matured. Indeed my spiritual being was being renewed on a gradual day after day basis.

Thank You, Almighty Father, that you haven’t given up on me, or anyone else, but still work with us daily.

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[i] https://www.aging.com/the-way-of-living-being-happy-and-healthy-at-an-old-age/

Sharing Good News

[i]

Mark 16:15 

Tree of Life Version (TLV)

¹⁵ He told them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to every creature.

Saint Francis of Assisi is often depicted as taking this great commission in Mark literally when he preached the gospel to the birds and other creatures. Most of Christendom has considered the commission as meaning take the gospel to every human of every race, gender, language, status, and locality. Most Christians, however, have not necessarily considered the commission as applying to them personally.

The Adventist church has a huge worldwide educational system. One of its goals is to bring the gospel to its students. Every once in a while, we as teachers in the system were encouraged to bring the gospel to our students—to make the gospel an integral part of the class content. I puzzled some and laughed a little about bringing religion into factoring a polynomial or integrating a trigonometric function. That was way beyond my creativity, and I was not willing to contrive artificial applications that would not bless anyone. At one point I did publish a paper suggesting how infinity is one aspect of God.[ii]

In my first teaching position, Ikizu Secondary School in Tanzania, teachers were expected to conduct a 10-minute worship during each day’s first class period. That period was actually 10 minutes longer than the other class periods. Since I always had a first period class, I became accustomed to reading a text and commenting on what this text said to me.

Later on, when I taught at the university level in the system, I found it fulfilling to take the first 5 minutes of any class to read a text and explain the significance I found in it. Some students criticized me for doing so; however, many students told me that they gained much when I did this. I also gained a personal blessing.

Lord, thank You for asking me to proclaim Your gospel in my world.

[i] https://www.eternitynews.com.au/world/catholics-commemorate-the-feast-of-st-francis-of-assisi/

[ii] http://www.institutechristianteaching.org/vol_01/vol_01.html see “The Finite, the Infinite, and God” pages 29-46 (1989)

Encourage One Another

[i]

1 Thessalonians 5:11 

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

¹¹ Therefore encourage one another and build each other up as you are already doing.

Once upon a time I was asked to visit high schools loosely affiliated with the university where I was teaching. I visited them and chatted with the teachers of mathematics there. I asked what they were doing and what training they had for the teaching of mathematics. I found that most of the teachers had no real training in mathematics and wished they did. They all indicated that if we had a master’s degree for teaching mathematics, they would come and take it. Their schools had a program that paid for them to take further studies in their fields each summer if they wished to do it.

I presented this request to my department. There was a favorable reception to the idea, and I was encouraged to look into the matter further. I got in touch with the Mathematics Association that was connected with college math teaching and preparation of mathematics teachers. They had a program that looked really exciting, and I spent hours adapting it to what we did at the university.

When I presented this as a possibility to the department, everybody seemed to be opposed to the very idea. I was accused of being non-professional, of undercutting what the university was doing, of causing everyone in the department to have to do more work, of working against the university’s policy of excellence. I received no encouragement whatsoever. The attacks turned personal. Finally, after months of discouragement, I dropped the whole idea.  

Apparently Paul felt this way in Thessalonica. He was chased out of the city by disgruntled people. Later he wrote a short letter to the church there. Eight times in this letter he mentioned encouragement (in the Holman Christian Standard Bible); that is more than in any two of his other letters.

Lord, use me to encourage those I associate with in their walk with You.

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[i] https://relentlessgrowth.wordpress.com/2017/07/07/encourage/