Recession & Recovery

Psalm 16: 6-7 

(New International Version, ©2010)

6 …Surely I have a delightful inheritance. 

7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; 

   

   My parents went to Africa in the middle of the great depression. Dad taught at a small Christian college there, and Mom stayed home to look after us. Salaries were never enough, but they were frugal and educated us two boys in Christian schools. This often meant going without a much needed pair of shoes to keep us in school.

    

   Due to the political issues in Africa, I was shunted off to boarding school at the age of 12. I learned to fend for myself. After I fell in with bad company, only the grace of God kept me sober and out of jail. Because of a pharisaical, legalistic emphasis at the school, I was persuaded that I had out-sinned God’s grace and was destined for eternal punishment. A young soldier took an interest in me and my soul; and refused to give up until I came to know the real grace of a loving God.

    

   After 12 years as missionaries in Africa, my wife and I returned to the States essentially penniless but happy and content in the Lord. Decades later we own our home and have been living out of debt for many years.

[i]

   During the recent recession, my brother and both of my brothers-in-law, along with many others in the family, lost their jobs. I kept mine. Our children are all employed. Friends ask me why I didn’t retire earlier. I reply that as long as I enjoyed my job and I had the health, I’d continue working.

    

   Am I uncertain about the future? Yes! Indeed. But I am certain of one thing: we serve a marvelous God. He has blest us through 50 years of married life, through poverty but never want, through rough times but with a strong faith that the grace of God is still abundantly more than enough to meet our deepest needs. Retired now, we live comfortably with the assurance that this is but a prelude to the delightful inheritance awaiting us.

    

   Praise to You, Lord God Almighty, for the sure inheritance you have prepared for us!

  

_____________________________

[i] http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/abc_wn_harris_jobs_120504_mn.jpg

   

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

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

Is All Genetic Engineering Safe?

Luke 17:26

New International Version (NIV)

²⁶ “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man.

In Altering the Blueprint: The Ethics of Genetics, “Professor Alexander McCall Smith explores the startling, and occasionally unsettling, ethical choices that humans face now that medical technology has made it possible to guide the hand of creation with increasing levels of precision and purpose.”[i] This comes from a university level course Professor Smith teaches at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.

Humans are becoming extremely resourceful in how they can modify many of the species of plants and animals that we use for our lives. Many voices are calling for avoidance of using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food they eat; in the meantime giant corporations like Monsanto are trying to force the world’s farmer’s to grow only GMOs.

[ii]

Even more difficult decisions are now facing us as we have the ability to breed human babies purely for “spare parts” for defective living humans. For decades in some parts of the world people have used the ability to predict the sex of their children to abort the fetus of the undesired sex. This is causing major social problems including human trafficking.

It seems that very shortly in the future we’ll be able to “enhance” our offspring by genetic engineering using the human genome. With sufficient money we may soon be able to increase the size, strength, intelligence, resistance to disease, and a host of other desirable qualities of our children. Taken to the logical end, this may mean we can produce a super-race who can tyrannize and enslave us. This dismal prospect has already been explored by some science fiction writers.

It may be that God destroyed the long-lived, super-intelligent antediluvians for extensive genetic experimentation. Christ’s prediction in our verse for today may just be trying to tell us that something like this will be an immediate precursor to His second return.

Lord, we pray with John the Revelator, “Even so come Lord Jesus!”[iii]

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[i] A review of the university course taught by McCall-Smith are at http://www.amazon.com/Altering-Blueprint-Ethics-Genetics-University-Level/dp/076075019X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1433767308&sr=1-1&keywords=mccall-smith+altering+the+blueprint

[ii] http://www.theothersideoffood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/gmos.jpg

[iii] Revelation 22:20 KJV

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

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