Prioritize Your Priorities

2 Peter 1:10

The Voice (VOICE)

¹⁰ Therefore, brothers and sisters, work that much harder to confirm that God has called you and claimed you. If you do this, then you will never fall along the way.

Tom came to the university with a number of Advanced Placement courses. These are classes he took while in high school with special examinations that gave him college credit for them. He also attended two math summer camps where he learned how to reason mathematically, how to prove theorems. He expressed tremendous enthusiasm for doing math and becoming a mathematician. He had learned skills that the average math major learns during his sophomore and junior years in college. Tom wanted to graduate in three years, and we worked out a program that would let him do that. In the middle of his second year at university, he took the very prestigious Putnam examination. He scored better than 80% of the best undergraduate math students in the nation.

[i]

Tom also wanted to earn a major in music. Both majors demand an unusual amount of work and practice outside of class. By the middle of his second year in college, it was becoming evident to me that he was spending a lot more time on his music than he was with mathematics. Because he had tremendous natural ability in math, he was still passing his math classes, but his mastery was slipping. He neglected his homework, which had the gradual result that his abilities to progress in math were slipping and becoming more and more anemic. In the end he graduated with majors in both fields. In music he excelled and went on to one of the most prestigious schools of music in the nation. Meantime, however, he has lost interest in doing advanced mathematics.

In my own life I have a major career in mathematics; I also have commitment to the cause of Christ. I have faith that by the grace of Christ I am saved and will “graduate” into heaven. Peter’s concern is that I run the danger of not putting enough effort into God’s calling in my own life and thereby losing interest in my eternal destiny, to the point that I turn away from my eternal salvation.

Lord, help me invest sufficient time and effort in following You to confirm that You have “called me and claimed me”.

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[i] http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/careers-advice/what-can-you-do-mathematics-degree

ISIS

2 Timothy 3:12

 The Voice (VOICE)

 Anyone wishing to live a godly life in Jesus the Anointed will be hunted down and persecuted.

[1]

 Sylvia mentioned that some long time friends had sent us an email about ISIS troops going methodically to Christian homes in Qaragosh, a town they recently entered, and beheading their children. Here is a portion of the email.

 ISIS is systematically going house to house to all the Christians and asking the children to denounce Jesus. He said so far not one child has. And so far all have consequently been killed, but not the parents. The UN has withdrawn, and the missionaries are on their own. They are determined to stick it out for the sake of the families even if it means their own deaths. They are very afraid and have no idea how to even begin ministering to these families who have seen their children martyred. Yet he says he knows God has called them for some reason to be His voice and hands at this place at this time.

Even so, they are begging for prayers for courage to live out their vocation in such dire circumstances. And like the children, accept martyrdom if they are called to do so. These brave parents instilled such a fervent faith in their children that they chose martyrdom. Please surround them in their loss with your prayers for hope and perseverance.

One missionary was able to talk to her brother briefly by phone. She didn't say it, but I believe she believes it will be their last conversation. Pray for her too. She said he just kept asking her to help him know what to do and do it. She told him to tell the families we ARE praying for them and they are not alone or forgotten -- no matter what. Please keep them all in your prayers.

Naturally it shocked and saddened me that people could be so barbaric in this enlightened age. I wondered if possibly this might be an exaggeration of an already terrible condition. I looked up ISIS on Snopes[i] to see if what I was reading was simply a very nasty “urban legend”. They list the truth of the story as “Undetermined” and “Mixture”. The two sites listed below tell more of the story. The original report was apparently sent out in August of 2014 by Sean Malone of Crisis Support International and was intended only for Sean’s immediate correspondents. Snopes does include a heart rending photograph of a child beheaded in Syria in 2013. You may want to look at the article first alone and decide whether or not you want your children to see it.

Needless to say it appears that the twenty-first century may have its own Holocausts, Gulags, and Rwandas.

Heavenly Father, my heart is revolted, angered, and saddened by the news I hear. I can only cry out “Come quickly, Lord Jesus!”

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[i] http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/isis.asp, and   http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/prayer/seanmalone.asp

Preparing for a Crown

1 Corinthians 9:25 

(New International Version, ©2010)

²⁵ Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

In 2011 an opportunity opened to present a paper at a mathematics education conference in South Africa. I wanted to go to South Africa again. Friends I would like to see live there. Places I would like to visit, some for the first time and some just to enjoy seeing again, beckoned. Having been born there and grown up there, I feel it’s almost like going home.

[1]

However, everything about the trip was expensive. It was possible that I could get some financial support from the university for going if I presented a paper at this conference. Furthermore, the trip would probably become partially tax deductible if I presented a paper there. So I decided to present a paper. I wrote up a proposal and e-mailed it in. The response was enthusiastically positive.

After that I spent a great deal of time researching my topic. I spent time in the university library using current periodicals. I spent hours looking on the Internet. I went over what I had been doing in my own classroom and worked to get things organized into a presentable form. Finally, I started writing the paper I planned to present. This took more time than even I had reckoned it would. Naturally, I didn’t want to stand in front of the group and sound under-prepared. 

What did all this time and effort gain me? Fifteen or twenty minutes of presentation; polite applause; an entry on my curriculum vitae; some financial support; pleasant memories, and that’s all.

Lord, help me to be as diligent spending meaningful time preparing for the time I will get to present myself before your throne!

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[1] http://www.epicprivatejourneys.com/assets/images/africa/southern-africa/south-africa/africa-south-africa-hero1.jpg

A Reluctant Colporteur

Deuteronomy 6:9

Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

⁹ and write them on the door-frames of your house and on your gates.

When I graduated from high school, Dad expected me to earn my way through college. The first two summers I worked as a student colporteur. This was probably the hardest work I ever did. My first summer, I worked in Mufulira in Zambia with my best childhood friend, John Raitt. He was an old hand at this and spent a day training me and then was around for the rest of the summer to encourage me, answer my questions, and provide support. He owned a motorbike, so we could get out and see and do things on weekends, etc. The second summer I worked alone in Ndola, Zambia.

Christianity was at its very lowest ebb in my life those two summers. So, unlike John, I had no real spiritual experience to buoy me up. Christ was only real to me as an unforgiving, accusing judge who was waiting to burn me up and rid the world of my bad influence. It was another whole year before I met Christ as a wonderful, loving, caring Savior.

The conference had both full-time colporteurs and student colporteurs. The full-timers had a number of perks that students did not. We were not allowed to sell the most popular, money-maker volumes, in case we undercut the full-timers. Student colporteurs had a contract that stipulated a combination of a certain total number of hours canvassing and a certain monetary value of books sold. If we met both criteria, then our college expenses were met by our earnings. If we only partially fulfilled the criteria, then the amount paid to the college was prorated accordingly.

[i]

We were required to work methodically from door to door, not missing a single home in our assigned region in the city. Once in a while I would come to a home with a mezuzah attached to the door-frame of a house. It contained a parchment with several verses from the Jewish Bible and was attached there as prescribed by this text from Deuteronomy. At such a house I was usually met with a very cold reception, most probably because of my preconceived, fatalistic attitude, and I never made a sale there.

Since that time I have come to know a number of Jews personally; I have stayed in their homes and eaten at their tables. We have shared our life and faith experiences with each other and respected the challenges we each face.

Maybe we don’t have portions of God’s instructions physically attached to our door posts or gates, but we would do well to think about them as we come and go.

Our God, thank You for loving and caring for us and encouraging us to remember You even in the simple things like walking into or out of our doors.

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[i] https://caroleconnolly.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/doormezuzah-500pix.jpg

The Big Tree and the Sabbath

Hosea 14:6

The Voice (VOICE)

⁶     She’ll send out shoots until her beauty is like the olive tree and her fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon.

Down the dirt road that ran in front of our house stood a magnificent lone pine tree. We always referred to it as the Big Tree. Its trunk was almost big enough to carve a tunnel for the road to go through. The branches spread out in every direction from a point about ten feet (3m) off the ground. Some reached more than 30 feet (10m) high. Others spread horizontally and every other angle to about the same length. The tree had hundreds of large round cones that were filled with hard-shelled nuts.

[1]

When we were kids there was hardly a day when we didn’t run, walk, or ride our bikes down to the Big Tree. Initially it took us a fair amount of exploration, trial, and error to find out how to get up the first ten feet to where the great limbs branched out in all directions. But after several days of rediscovering the route to the branching, we could run up it in a flash, our bare feet gripping the rough bark to support us.

From the level of branching we had no trouble climbing to the farthest points on almost all the branches. We quickly learned that we had to beware of the branches when they became too thin to support our weight. For years we spent several hours a day climbing the various branches and traversing from one branch to another. There was an endless number of ways to get around the tree.

The branches became too thin to reach most of the cones directly, but the nuts they contained were too delicious not to try. Besides climbing we would stand on the ground and throw branches or stones at the cones. When we succeeded in knocking a cone down, we would gather around and break the cone open and pull out the nuts. Then we would each find a couple of rocks, place a nut on the bigger one, and hit it with the smaller one to break it open and feast on the nuts. Often we would hit the nut too hard, and it would either shoot off and get lost in the grass or be crushed into tiny fragments. At other times we would hit a supporting finger and get up and jump around and around, holding the injured finger and crying out in pain. Of course, many nuts were just hollow shells especially if the cones were rather old.

Mom taught us not to eat in between meals. The prohibition came with strong religious backing. However, she seemed to turn a blind eye when we ate the pine nuts we had worked so hard to obtain. Our parents also had very strict ideas about what activities were allowed on Sabbath and which weren’t. For some reason that I never understood, climbing trees was forbidden. We could take Sabbath hikes up the mountains and scale the naked cliffs and rocks, but climbing trees was taboo.

One day a missionary family from the Congo visited us. Their two kids, Tom and Lucy, were just our ages. We felt we had to show them our greatest treasure, the Big Tree. Of course, once we were at the tree, we couldn’t resist climbing and showing off our skills even though it was the Sabbath. I climbed way out on a branch that ran parallel to the ground and crossed the dirt road. As usual, when I got to the end of this branch, I took a good hold on the branch with both hands and flung myself off the end. The usual result was that I would hang there briefly, suspended above the earth, and then drop the few feet to the ground. This time the little branch I was holding onto snapped off, and my right hand hit the ground first trying to break my fall. It worked, but it also broke my arm and hurt worse than I could ever remember hurting before.

On the way to hospital Dad, who usually said very little, asked pensively, “Do you think this happened because it was Sabbath?” Mom, who usually expounded at length when I did something wrong, was silent. I did have four weeks to be constantly reminded of my indiscretion by a hot and itchy plaster cast.

Lord, sometimes You ask us to do or not do something, and we don’t understand why. Then You watch us pensively as we disregard Your request and reap the results that You were trying to shield us from. Thank You for Your forbearance, forgiveness, and rescue.

__________________________________

[1] This is not the Big Tree, but the Big Tree was shaped something like this one. This tree grows near our home.

Airport Fog Expedites Journey

Isaiah 41:10

The Voice (VOICE)

¹⁰     So don’t be afraid. I am here, with you;
        don’t be dismayed, for I am your God.
    I will strengthen you, help you.
        I am here with My right hand to make right and to hold you up.

The landing lights of the Nairobi International Airport stretched straight off into the distance as our East African Airways flight banked into the final approach. I had gotten on the flight in Musoma, Tanzania, on the eastern shores of the mighty Lake Victoria. We had landed in Mwanza, Tanzania, on the south shore and then Entebbe, Uganda, on the west, and now we had flown to Nairobi where this flight ended, and the well over a hundred people on board were very anxious to disembark.

[i]

I entertained several fears. It was December, and I was en route to Lusaka, Zambia, and a Christmas road trip with my parents to Rhodesia and South Africa. Due to their apartheid policies, these two countries were black listed in Tanzania. I wasn’t sure how much trouble we would have getting back into Tanzania where we were serving as missionaries. Sylvia and our four month old Esther had flown to Malawi earlier with the mission pilot. I had remained at Ikizu Secondary School in Tanzania to finish up the academic year.

More immediate misgivings were how I would get a room tonight in Nairobi and then get back to the airport early in the morning to catch the next flight from there to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and then on to Blantyre in Malawi and finally to Lusaka.

Suddenly the jet engines roared to full throttle and the plane started to climb. We were in a cloud for a little while and then the sky went black as we leveled off above the clouds.

After a quarter of an hour, I said to the man sitting next to me, “We’re flying round in circles.”

“How do you know?” he asked skeptically.

“I’ve seen Venus come by the window several times.”

“I know nothing about the stars.” He said flatly.

We flew for an hour more before the voice of the pilot cracked into life from the plane’s speakers, “We were lined up to land when the fog settled onto the runway. We’ll fly around for another half-hour and then, if the fog doesn’t lift, we’ll have to fly to Dar es Salaam before we run out of fuel.” Mild cursing came from many up and down the aisle.

Twenty-five minutes later my seat mate asked me, “Are we still flying around in circles?”

“Yes,” I responded. We were all very tired and lapsed into silence again. About a quarter of an hour later I added, “We’ve been flying in a south-east direction for about five minutes now.”

He cussed quietly. About ten minutes later the pilot announced that we were headed to Dar es Salaam. We would land in about an hour and a quarter. The airline would put us up in a hotel for the night, and they would try and arrange transport back to Nairobi in the morning. He apologized for any inconveniences this might cause us. Loud and fluent cussing went up and down the aisles.

As far as I know, I was the only one on that plane who was rejoicing. I would get a good night’s rest at the airline’s expense, and they had just solved my problem of how to get onto the Blantyre bound plane in the morning.

Lord God, thank You for using an inconvenient natural event to aid me in my quandary. Thank You for always being ready to help in large matters and in small.

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[i] https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwUQ8ZJ5CyGczQUOo0cQM3Hw_ARaBUxdTmfOorT48FIsUuowYQra1U5UQi5xRW1mIGoRm_3LfLQXJmSFq942yMU51p0W-3EAasMaEQSrO44s5WVJsYLIkrtwBqhSaS5JPsNzfzL6AGNnAh/s1600/IMG_4828.JPG

Reverence God--Honor the King

1 Peter 2:17

The Voice (VOICE)

Respect everyone. Love the community of believers. Reverence God. Honor your ruler.

On July 4, 2015, we attended church in Cottonwood, Arizona. For special music we heard a heart-felt rendition of “I’m Proud to Be an American,” a popular country and western patriotic song by Lee Greenwood. The musician followed it with a parallel version, “I’m Proud to Be a Christian,” that lifts up the life and death of Christ and the salvation He provides us. A church elder spoke about miracles in the church from Bible times to today. He sees the hand of God often working through the many triumphs of medical science and making them even more effective and successful. He bore witness to God’s part in his own health struggles and how he received two lungs in a transplant some six years ago. He credits the Lord for his good health today.

[i]

After a brief lunch with our friends in the church we drove up through Navajo and Hopi land toward the quaint town of Cortez in the southwest corner of Colorado. The trip took us through several hundred miles of beautiful Arizona desert, enlivened by the monsoon rains. The sky was cloudy with great thunderstorms on all sides of us. At times we went through an edge of one or another of these spectacular storms. As we drove the last twenty miles, the setting sun shone below all of these storms and illuminated everything with a golden red light. We marveled in this monumental display of God’s fireworks that couldn’t be duplicated by any manmade fireworks display.

We pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot where we planned to sleep that night. As we got out of our pickup, we were welcomed with powerful explosions. Independence Day celebrations were just starting across the street. We pulled down our tail gate, sat on it, and for the next half-hour turned our attention to a great series of fireworks. The monsoon clouds overhead dropped occasional giant raindrops on us while the festive explosions turned the flat bottoms of these clouds into reds, greens, whites, and blues. What an unforgettable day to blend our reverence to God with honor for our ruler!

Lord, we thank You for Your healing hand, Your magnificent power in providing for us, and the unprecedented freedom we have to live our faith.

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[i] https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5295/5535799790_c321372271_b.jpg

Days of Darkness and Mounting Frustration

Ecclesiastes 5:17-18

The Voice (VOICE)

¹⁷ So all our days we eat in darkness, with mounting frustration, suffering, and anger. ¹⁸ Then it dawned on me that this is good and proper: to eat and drink and find the good in all the toil that we undertake under the sun during the few days God has given, for this is our lot in life.

[i]

This past weekend the annual graduation at La Sierra University took place. I went down on Saturday morning and celebrated with the graduates from the Mathematics and Computer Science Department.

Before I retired, two years ago, I spent several weeks working with the department to arrange matters so an advisee would be able to finish her degree by this graduation. I had to get permission for her to substitute certain classes for required classes, etc. Everything worked out as we had planned, and she graduated precisely when she had planned to graduate. She came to me personally and thanked me for arranging everything. I congratulated her and replied, “You earned your degree. Now you have every right to celebrate!”

I started teaching mathematics in 1965 and taught until 2013. That’s 48 years of doing what I enjoyed, namely mathematics, and helping thousands of students to learn enough for their purposes in life. Many of them thanked me and told me how much they appreciated what I had done for them. Of course, there were some who hated mathematics and consequently hated me for teaching it.

The longer I have lived and labored, the more I respect Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes,[ii] for his insight into the lot of humans on this earth. And I have enjoyed finding good in the daily toil in spite of the often mounting frustration and anger attached to some aspects of my chosen career.

Lord, thank You for lives You have been able to touch through my labors. Continue to use me to touch lives in my new circumstances.

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[i] http://www.jeffhaanen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/king-solomon-and-the-queen-of-sheba.jpg?w=1024

[ii] 

  Ecclesiastes 1:1; a collector of sentences or a preacher

Do It Right the First Time

Genesis 39:19-20

The Voice (VOICE)

¹⁹ When Potiphar heard his wife’s account, his face flushed with anger. ²⁰ So Potiphar, Joseph’s master, put him into prison and locked him up in the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.

In the center of the university business office stood a huge work bench. No one had ever cleaned it, and the pattern of the linoleum covering of the bench could barely be seen because of the filth, grime, stain, grunge, and dirt on it. Workers had obviously spilled their Postum^®, hot chocolate, or root beer while eating their greasy sandwiches on it. No one had ever even wiped it off. All of this had dried on and was camouflaged by pencil traces and erasings, ball point pen marks, and ink spills.

[i]

It was my duty to clean the business offices every night after the day crew had given up and gone home. I would start working about six o’clock in the evening and work through till midnight or much later. When I went back to my room, the offices were always thoroughly cleaned and sparkling when I got done−except for this work bench eyesore.

For well over a year I had waited for someone to say something, suggesting that the horrid thing be cleaned. No one ever did. During the work day it was usually more than half covered with the normal papers and documents of interest. It probably didn’t seem as bad to them as it did to me when I came in.

One night I finally decided I needed to do something about that work bench. I got out the best cleaning chemicals we had. I took the professional grade steel wool and went to work on it. By three o’clock in the morning I had cleaned half of it, and that half looked beautiful. I had classes in the morning, so I went back to my room and caught a few hours of sleep before my morning classes. I figured I would get the other half done the next night.

That afternoon my boss called me in. The university business manager had called him. He was furious that whoever cleaned the offices had only done half of his work. Half of the work bench was still so terribly filthy that it couldn’t be used. He had gone on and on about it until my boss was afraid he might trigger an aneurism.

[ii]

My boss was a prince of a man and extremely understanding. When I told him about the work bench and how it had never, ever been cleaned and how long and hard I had worked on it, he understood. But he knew more about human nature than I did. He recognized that people don’t look at the part well done but only on the part still undone. He taught me a great lesson. As with  Joseph, I had been doing the right thing all along, and it only rose up to bite me.

Thank You, Lord, that You read my heart and motives and understand why I do things and then respond accordingly.

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[i] https://superriska.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/lessons-from-dirt-and-dirty-dishes/

[ii] http://godcenteredmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/mean_boss_aa035791.jpg

#MISUNDERSTOOD #FAULTFINDER #LEARN #LESSON #MOTIVES #HARDWORK #IE #CALIFORNIA #JOSEPH