The Lord Is Your Shade

 

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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.

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[1] https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Inspirational-Images/large/Psalms_121-5.jpg

Eaten by a Snake

 

[1]

 

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!

 

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[1] http://gallery.kingsnake.com/data/68690DCP_0757.JPG

Everything is New

 

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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

Happy New Year 2025

 

[1]

Psalm 25:4-5 Good News Translation

⁴ Teach me your ways, O Lord;
    make them known to me.
⁵ Teach me to live according to your truth,
    for you are my God, who saves me.

 

This is my prayer for 2025. God has certainly led me in 2024—sometimes in paths I didn’t really want to go, and sometimes in desirable paths that I would not have chosen without His leading. Usually, I have chosen my own ways, and He has either gone with me or tolerated my wandering. In our Christmas letter, which I have posted on this Blogspot (https://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com/), I mention occasions where I sensed God’s leading in a compelling way.

When I was a kid in academy (high-school), I was taught that I had a guardian angel who accompanied me where ever I went. I was taught that he kept a “notebook” at hand and wrote down everything I did, i.e. he was the Gestapo who was always trying to trap me in my misbehaviors. If I went into unsavory places like a bioscope (cinema), a bar, or a nightclub, he would wait outside for me to come out. If I died in such a place, the devil made off with my soul, grinning from ear to ear; my guardian angel would then weep for me.

In my current considerations, I believe that I do have a guardian angel who does his best to guard me against sin, harm, and danger. I also believe there is a rogue angel with me who is out to destroy me at all cost and sometimes has my ear. A major chore of the guardian is to thwart the rogue’s evil attempts. I do not believe that my guardian angel is there to spy on me. Christ promised in John 3:17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its savior.” (GNT) Christ’s own testimony is that His is a purpose of love and salvation.

So, in 2025, may I and you start each day reminding ourselves that we have limitless sources available for our boon and to preserve us from the bane.

Thank You, Lord, for exercising Your mighty power and Your infinite wisdom on our behalf at all times!

Happy New Year!

 

 

Labels: #California, #ie, #inlandempire, #boon, #bane, #guardianangel, #rogueangel, #gestapo, #bioscope, #cinema, #nightclub, #bar, #Christmasletter, #judgement, #danger, #harm, #sin, #academy, #highschool, #chore, #Christ, #God

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[1] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1821856644/12-png-happy-new-year-2025-clipart-new?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_all&utm_custom1=_k_Cj0KCQiAyc67BhDSARIsAM95Qzta83Tfg9uwX6B5xW1kXAIRKCWHUCo8sP0LhThav8EDOjJdAbyiHg8aAmZvEALw_wcB_k_&utm_content=go_21500569332_164907277083_707558291651_pla-293946777986_c__1821856644_5362917685&utm_custom2=21500569332&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyc67BhDSARIsAM95Qzta83Tfg9uwX6B5xW1kXAIRKCWHUCo8sP0LhThav8EDOjJdAbyiHg8aAmZvEALw_wcB

Hold Out to the End

 

[1]

Matthew 24:12-13 Good News Translation

¹² Such will be the spread of evil that many people's love will grow cold. ¹³ But whoever holds out to the end will be saved.

.

 

While a student at Andrews University, I discovered the joys of being in an academic environment. Many of the students had interests in all kinds of things; curiosity was popular and encouraged. I had discovered the fulfilment that came from picking up languages. In high school I learned Afrikaans and could speak it fluently. Then as a sophomore in college, I found myself at Seminar Marienhöhe sweating to learn German. By the end of the semester, I was speaking it fairly easily. At the end of that semester, my brother Elwood and I were shipping out to the States through Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From a Bbile Society booth, I picked up the gospel of Mark in Dutch. Totally unaware of the pitfalls of language, I spent several weeks reading the gospel and, using my Afrikaans to understand the meanings of the words, wrote up a grammar for Dutch and felt pretty good about knowing the language. When I got to Holland, I quickly discovered that I had done well and understood all that was being spoken. However, it took a couple days to pin down the fact that the Dutch I had taught myself so diligently was very old fashioned. It was like King James English—understandable, but totally outdated. The gospel I had used was probably the Statenvertaling of the Bible and was published in 1637! However, by the end of four days, I was getting around very well in modern Dutch.

At Andrews the Greek scholar, Leona Running, announced that she would be teaching New Testament Greek on Friday evenings in the Seminary Chapel. As a kid I had spent a lot of time delving into various historical fonts and knew the Greek alphabet very well. So, I showed up to the Seminary Chapel and got myself a seat near the front. The chapel filled up so there was standing room only as Dr. Running began her first lecture. She had me enthralled. I observed, in total surprise, that over the next ten weeks there were significantly fewer attendees at each meeting. For the last few meetings there were only about four of us attending. Prof. Running was not surprised.

About ten years later, I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa working on my PhD in mathematics. I was toying with going to teach math at Middle East College in Beirut, Lebanon. Two Egyptian students at the university announced a “class” in Egyptian Arabic. I signed up and made excellent progress in Arabic. Again, I noticed the same phenomenon as in the Greek class. The first meeting or two we had a huge class, but towards the end there were only a handful of people who were still coming. I did not go to Lebanon; instead, I went to Helderberg College in South Africa. However, I’ve often wondered how I would have done with Egyptian Arabic in Lebanon. As it is, I never used the Arabic and so have forgotten it, except for some cognates of Swahili words I had learned during five years teaching math and learning Swahili in Tanzania.

In Biblical stories, remember Noah’s Ark? I have a feeling that when Noah started building it, he had a large number of helpers. However, as more than a century went by, many helpers’ love or enthusiasm grew cold, and they deserted him. Eventually only three of his sons, and he probably had many, entered the ark with their wives and were saved. Most of the antediluvial patriarchs started their families during their first or second centuries, whereas Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth were all born around the beginning of his seventh century. Very likely he had other children during his younger years, but they never went into the ark to be saved. That must have been tragic for Noah and his wife.

Christ was aware of our human nature to start things but then give up along the way. Hence His encouragement in our text.

Continue to remind me, Lord, that I must hang in there with You, or all of our cooperation of effort will be in vain.

 

[1] https://blissfulroad.com/the-importance-of-persistence-in-achieving-your-goals/

Clarke's Christmas Letter in 2024

 

Christmas 2024

 

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Uni took the picture above at Thanksgiving this year. Our Thanksgiving was celebrated with Fred and Uni in Riverside. In our picture, David and Julia Zuckerman are standing, Uni and Fred Clarke are on the floor trying to get Oso to look at the camera. On the couch we have Craig and Esther Kinzer sitting next to Sylvia and Wil Clarke with Katie (or Catherine the Great) lying on Oso’s bed. Our whole family was together! Our dogs even made it, but on account of their consideration, the cat and rats stayed at their respective homes. Our kids made the food including dessert. They asked us to bring the drinks. Thank you, kids, for your consideration for the old folks!

A website called NaNoWriMo tends to build a fire under me to keep writing, even when it’s inconvenient. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writers’ Month = November, and any genre (not just novels) is grist for their mill. It helped me get all but the last chapter or two of my book about our experience in Tanzania (1967-1971) written. It is in memoir form. I should really say our book because Sylvia has put a lot of time into it, too. I hope that before next year at this time, we will have the printed book in hand.

You may remember that there was an eclipse of the sun back in August, 2017. I was still recovering from West Nile Virus, and that prevented me from traveling to see it. So we laid plans to see the eclipse this year (April 2024), the only other total eclipse visible from the U.S. until 2044 (at which time I would be 102 years old, if I lived that long.) Julia, who works at Cal. Tech., figured out that Torreon, Mexico, would have the best possible chance of clear skies. So we flew there in April. We rented a car that was supposed to seat six people. Herz cheated us and gave us an SUV that only seated five. There were six people in our group: Julia, David, Fred, Uni, Sylvia and I. Almost everybody on our plane was going to Torreon, Mexico, to see the eclipse, so there were no other cars in the area from any rental company. Uni volunteered to sit in the back facing backward. Thank you, Uni! The skies were cloudy in Torreon, so we drove for over an hour to Durango and had a wonderful view of the eclipse. Watching the total eclipse gave me an amazing, unexpected emotional high. We are grateful to our children for making this possible.

We travelled east again this summer. My cousin Fred’s wife passed away around Thanksgiving last year, and my primary goal for the trip was to attend her funeral in June. (Because the ground freezes in northern Michigan during the winter, they delayed the funeral

until June.) An advantage of attending funerals is that it is usually accompanied by a family reunion. It is a foretaste of the grand family reunion we will have when Christ comes. I’m counting on you to attend that one with me! Thank You, Jesus!

          On Lincoln Highway in Wyoming

A couple years ago two young people phoned me from Ontario, Canada, They had done some research and wanted to write a historical novel about my mother, Esther. I asked them how much they knew about her, and Nolan sent me a document close to 50 pages long of stuff they had found on line! I was stunned. We spent a few weeks on and off, talking on the phone about her, and I tried to give them an idea of the human side of her life. So I set another goal to stop and see these two, Nolan and Sarah.

I had a frustrating time trying to get a time when we could all three meet. Nolan and Sarah live about 150 miles apart. While I was in Michigan and Ohio, I just couldn’t get it to work and couldn’t get hold of Nolan by phone, I finally prayed to the Lord to have Nolan phone me. That was about 10:00 one night when Sylvia and I were sleeping in the bed of our pickup. The Lord usually doesn’t answer me with such alacrity. But 2:00 a.m. my cell phone rang, and Nolan promised to make all the arrangements. I was stunned that God had chosen to answer my petition so soon! After the phone call, I lay back and laughed just like Abraham and his wife laughed when God promised to give them their son, Isaac. It is an astounding event when the almighty God chooses to answer you personally. We had a tremendous get together the next Sabbath in St. Thomas, Ontario. We were delighted to meet both of their families. Now I’m eagerly awaiting the fictional story of my mother’s life from their computers!

We had originally planned to come home via Washington State and see Sylvia’s brother Judson. However, a sequence of events brought us home pretty much along I-40, which doesn’t go anywhere within half a country from them. So in August we outlined a detailed plan that would take us north to Washington to see Judson and a number of our other family members and friends.

    At Pumpkin Rock near home

Sylvia and I are now both octogenarians, so the morning we left home, I said to the Lord, “You know, Lord, I haven’t really talked to You about our trip. Please give us a safe trip, and if You think we shouldn’t go, please let us know, and we’ll turn around and come home.” The temperature was well above 105º (40°C), but we made good time. We were driving our car this time, and it has a better A/C, than the pickup. At 168 miles (270 km) from home along US 395, we stopped at a rest area.

Before taking off from there, I pulled out a map and studied it a bit. My cell phone rang, and my ENT (otolaryngologist) said, “I just got your culture back, and you have a staph infection. Find the nearest hospital and go to the emergency room and get treatment.” He was sure they would admit me. Not wanting to be in the hospital out there in the desert—if there were one to by found—I realized that the Lord was telling me to turn around. At about 9:00 p.m. I pulled into the Riverside Community Hospital. They indicated they wanted to keep me there. However, by about 2:00 a.m., they sent me home with a prescription. A couple weeks later, my ENT did surgery on my sinuses, and the staph has disappeared. Thank You, Lord, for taking a personal interest in my well-being and Dr. de Jager for following up on my condition.

One of the major reasons for going to Washington State was to see my cousin Eugene. He was in a precarious condition health-wise, and I really wanted to see him again. However, that was not to be. He passed away a couple months later. If I had driven north, I would have probably seen him, but there may have been two funerals instead of just his. My brother, Elwood, helped me financially to fly up to Eugene’s funeral.

Sylvia is celebrating her retirement by taking voice lessons from a voice teacher she found in Loma Linda, CA. She has sung in choirs on and off ever since before we were married and got a lot of training there. However, she never had the opportunity to take personal voice lessons, before. She is really enjoying the training. She has performed in a couple concerts recently including singing “The Holy City”, a musical ballad composed in 1892 by Michael Maybrick (alias Stephen Adams) and text by Frederic Weatherly. Needless to say, I’m mighty proud of her! This season she has laid some plans to take groups singing carols in the neighborhood especially for people who are shut-ins. You’re welcome to come and join her.

“The Inlandia Institute is a lively center of literary activity serving the 29,000 sq. mile inland Southern California Region”. Sylvia and I have benefited and been benefitted by the Institute. I have been an Inlandia Writing Workshop leader for four years now. I started doing this after the untimely death of Ms. Celena Bumpus, who was our leader for years before she passed away at the beginning of 2021. I have neither the creativity nor the wide knowledge she had. But our group is producing excellent material. Both Sylvia and I enjoy meeting with our group, Celena’s Scribes, and with Rose Mongé’s Memoir Writing Group. Rose spends a lot of time preparing for her group. She even publishes an annual writing anthology. Both Sylvia and I contributed some articles to what Rose calls Writing Warriors: Time Passages this year. Sylvia also has seven pages and I have six pages in the 2023 anthology, Writing From Inlandia, published last month. Besides my Tanzania memoir that I am finishing up, I also have a devotional blog I call “Experiencing a Bible Verse,” and I encourage you to check it out at https://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com/  I have not published as many blogs this year as previous years. Let’s just attribute that to my slowing down as the years go by.

We wish you a blessed and merry Christmas this year and pray for a powerful and prayerful 2025. It appears to us that things may be winding up for the spectacular coming of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We can rejoice to meet Him in person.

 

Love,

Wil & Sylvia Clarke

5547 Wentworth Dr.

Riverside, CA 92505

Wil’s cell: 951-231-5402

E-mail: wil.clarke@gmail.com

Erase our home phone if you have it

 

 

 

 

Sleep, Peace, and Lions

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Psalm 4:8 King James Version

⁸ I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.

 

I love the majestic English of the King James Version of the Bible, don’t you? I read Psalm 4 this morning, and it reminded me of an incident in our Tanzanian experience and also of Rose, our fearless leader, who assigned us the prompt: “Write about the blessings you have in your life.” During this NaNoWriMo month, I am trying to whip my Ikizu Memoirs into final or at least semi-final form. I am on chapter 53 of 58 planned chapters. Sylvia is my editor, and she recently sent me chapter 41 entitled Lion Encounter.

On Sunday night we were camping with our group in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Serengeti National Park. In our tent we had our one-year-old daughter and the three Conway children, too. I awoke in the predawn to the sound of something dropping onto the roof of our tent. Deciding it must be a small branch from the tree we had pitched under, I turned over to go back to sleep. Suddenly, George’s shout: “Get out of here!” from the next tent, shocked me into action. Grabbing a flashlight, I jumped up and raced to the door of the tent, unzipped it, and shone the flashlight out into the darkness.

I stopped dead. Frozen. Not ten feet were the shining eyes of two lions staring back at me. There was nothing between me and two lions! They lay between me and the campfire. Time stretched out. The lions watched me but made no move. I remained still. Slowly, I swung the light of the flashlight in a wider arc. There were at least seven lions around our campfire, staring at me. Their eyes roved a bit to my right. There was George, clad only in his briefs, standing frozen in his doorway—and more lions.

I yelled to wake up the others in the group. Two teenagers sleeping in an old Land Rover looked out their windows. They started the Land Rover, and it backfired into action. All the noise was disturbing the lions’ tranquility. Slowly they got up and stretched. Regally, thirteen lions filed out of our campsite. There was no hurry, no obvious fear in their attitude, maybe only a bit of disgust.

No one got any more sleep. When daylight arrived and we got up to eat breakfast, on the roof of our tent we found two dusty lion footprints. Conversation centered around whether or not the lions were hungry. Two or three miles down the track towards the park headquarters in Seronera, we came upon our thirteen lions, busily polishing off two Thompson Gazelles. That ended the discussion about the lions’ lack of hunger.

This morning, my gratitude extends from not being devoured by lions then to an almost complete Ikizu Memoir now. Rejoice with me!

How grateful we are, Lord, that we can lie down and sleep because of the assurance that You make us dwell in safety.

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.instagram.com/elmarvn/p/CqPs67XKbTg/