Michael McAllister, late of Aussie-land but now transplanted in the fertile fields of Texas, sent around to some of us a picture of an actual church sign.

The actual name of the church was “The Church of the Cross”…

Which raises a question right there: Where do the calm and the congenial and the relaxed and the happy go to church… while all their “cross” relatives and friends go there? Do they have a separate evening service for the friendly and happy folks?

Then there’s the message underneath: “Don’t let worry kill you; let the church help.”

Well, if all the folks who go to that church are “cross”, then I can see how that would work!

Reminds me of the Christadelphian who told his friend, “We Christadelphians go to meeting every Sunday, where we take bread and wine.”

Problem was, “wine” sounded like “whine” (must have been an Aussie accent!)… which provoked his friend to ask, “So if they all want to whine, why don’t they just stay home?”

Get picture

What’s the difference between trash, stuff, and a collection? It depends.

If it gets in the way, and you see no use for it, then it’s… trash — and you throw it out!

If it gets in the way, and you might have a use for it one day, then it’s… stuff — and you shove it in a corner until later.

But if you think it’s valuable, for whatever strange reason, then it’s… a collection — and you store it away carefully, after examining and analyzing and cataloging it.

So what’s the difference? Why, the difference between being a slob (or at least a messy person) and — trumpets, please! — a collector!

Of course, there are different kinds of collectors. First, there are the casual collectors — of clothes, shoes, books, magazines, audio tapes, video tapes, and the like. These are “things” we use, have used, or will use again; “things” we enjoy and perhaps want to share with others. Nothing too strange there. Or is there?

Then there are the serious collectors — again, perhaps of the same clothes, shoes, books, magazines, tapes, and so forth. But the serious collector wants more than he and all of his friends can use in a lifetime; he wants to collect for the sheer pleasure of accumulating and possessing. He may join clubs, subscribe to newsletters, and attend conferences where others of similar bent study, discuss, and add to their collections.

And finally there is the passionate, or “crazy” collector. He wants everything in a particular genre. This desire becomes a fixation, an obsession; and he is willing to spend time and money — a lot of it — to satisfy that desire. (It’s always an interesting exercise to decide where to draw the line between “serious” and “crazy”. One rule of thumb: “crazy” is always just a couple of stages beyond where I am at any given moment.)

Exactly what do collectors collect? The answer is: anything and everything. Besides collections of things that can be used, there are collections of items that remind their owners of special vacations or happy times. There are “collectibles” like fine furniture, crystal, china, dolls, commemorative plates, and the complete set of 130 bound volumes of The Christadelphian magazine. Then there are collections for the profit motive: old comic books, old baseball cards out of bubble gum packs, autographs of famous people, first editions of best-sellers, paintings and other works of art, antiques. There is no end to what someone, somewhere, will consider worth collecting, and what someone else, properly motivated, will consider worth buying.

And then, there are the truly “unbelievable” collections: 18,000 puzzles, 150 varied images of the Last Supper, 5,000 Lionel toy trains, 40,000 swizzle sticks, 5,000 spinning tops, 1 million aluminum pop tops, 125 restored Studebaker automobiles. And a partridge in a pear tree!

In “Magnificent Obsession”, a book about 20 obsessive collectors extraordinaire, author Mitch Tuchman quotes Leonore Fleischer, a collector of antique American beadwork, china, linens, Disneyana, and man-in-the-moon graphics: “Collecting is a disease. It’s a poison that enters your bloodstream. I’m less addicted to it now than I used to be, because I’ve traded up so that everything I collect or used to collect is too expensive for me to buy any more, and I’m not satisfied with the cheap stuff.”

Later, Fleischer describes what she believes would be an appropriate ending to her life’s story: “A Viking ship burial, that’s what I want. I want to be loaded up on a great big barge with all my collections, put out to sea, and the whole thing set alight. Oh, sure, but my barge would probably sink before it got a foot from the shore.”

The Bible describes men whose wealth and power allowed them to become serious (or “crazy”) collectors:

King Solomon collected hundreds of wives (1Ki 11:3), who brought him untold grief. Near the end of his life, he could write that he had not found one upright woman among a thousand (Ecc 7:28). And when he died, his one son proved a disaster on his father’s throne.

King Nebuchadnezzar collected cities and kingdoms like so many coffee mugs, boasted of his mighty accomplishments, and then — under the hand of Almighty God — lost all reason and lived like an animal for seven years before the same God restored his sanity (Dan 4).

Paul equated covetousness with idolatry (Col 3:5). And Jesus warned against the evil of covetousness:

“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).

In the parable that Jesus told to accompany his warning, a rich man says to himself:

“What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops… This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods” (vv 17,18).

The poor “rich” man — the foolish “collector” of wealth — died that very night, while planning the immense reconstruction project that would provide space to store all the crops and goods he didn’t really need and couldn’t really use. Jesus added the postscript:

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (v 21).

By contrast to this sad tale, Jesus also said:

“Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!… Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these… But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well” (vv 24,27,31).

In the long run, almost every “crazy” collection has value (sentimental if not monetary) to the collector or to his heirs. But in the longest run, no collection of “things” has any real value. Jesus, and then Paul, compare the Second Coming to a visitation by a “thief in the night” (Mat 24:43,44; Luke 12:39,40; 1Th 5:2; Rev 3:3; 16:15). Why? Because a thief comes unexpectedly, and can steal away anything and everything which the homeowner considers valuable: clothes, cars, furs, jewelry, TV sets, boats, sports equipment, musical instruments. And this “thief”, Jesus (!), can steal away even those intangible things upon which the possessor has placed value: jobs, vacations, friends, families, power, prestige, pride, political influence. How? Because, standing before the Lord at his return, the “collector” will realize that all the “things” for which he has striven and sacrificed in this life suddenly have no value whatsoever. And they well may mark his funeral pyre, their final blaze a brief memorial to a lifetime of wasted days.

In the view of eternity, many “collections” are truly worthless. But some “collections” have real value:

* The “collection” of God’s words and teachings, treasured up in the mind:

“I have hidden (collected, preserved) your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psa 119:11).

* The “collection” of credits in the bank account of heaven. Jesus said:

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:33,34).

* The “collection” of godly qualities of character. Peter wrote:

“Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love” (2Pe 1:5-7).

* And the “collection” of friends and family who believe in the same God and hold the same hope. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians:

“For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (1Th 2:19,20).

One day, when God sends His Son Jesus back to the earth, it will be for the purpose of helping the Father complete the greatest “collection” of all time:

“Then those who feared the LORD… ‘will be mine,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘in the day when I make up my treasured possession (jewels: KJV). I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him’ ” (Mal 3:16,17).

“The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear” (Mat 13:41-43).

May we be a treasured part of God’s special and ultimate “collection”, when His Son returns.

Speaking of the “creation” (ie, in Gen 1-3), and the whole “creation” being made subject to “vanity”, “futility”, etc (Rom 8)….

Have you ever looked at how that Greek word “ktisis” (or something like that) — translated “creation” and similarly — is used in the NT? It seems almost every time to be speaking of God’s spiritual “creation”… us!

Look at all the passages together, and see if that isn’t so.

The NT emphasis upon an ongoing, “spiritual”, “typical” creation over the past 6,000 years (or whatever) is telling us, it seems… that God’s “creative” work has never really ceased, and that His work as outlined in Gen 1-3 is a prophetic type of His continuing work in and with the people of the world today, who are the “clay” out of which He continues to create, every day, new individual features of His spiritual (and ultimately eternal) “creation”.

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2Co 4:6,7).

“Thou whose Almighty Word Chaos and darkness heard, And took their flight. Hear now, we humbly pray, And where Thy gospel day Sheds not its glorious ray, ‘Let there be light!’ “

Some of us will be familiar with the expression: “You are what you eat.” All of us will have heard someone say: “Oh, I can’t eat that… I’m watching my weight.” We are becoming more aware of cholesterol levels, sodium levels, fiber and sugar content, etc, in our foods. This is the day of dieting, food fads, weight-watchers’ clubs, and — at the extreme — bulimia and anorexia. Then there are other parts of this strange world where people can only wish for such ‘problems’ as too much food and too many choices.

Our Lord taught his disciples to pray: “Give us today our daily bread” (Mat 6:11). In the Old Testament we see the example of daily bread in the giving of manna to the Israelites in the wilderness. Israel, once again, were murmuring, this time because they lacked bread. They had, as one writer said, “sand in their sandwiches, monotony of landscape, thirsty kids, bickering families, no supermarkets at the corner… and now no bread”. So God provided, once again: “He rained down manna for the people to eat, He gave them the grain of heaven. Men ate the bread of angels; He sent them all the food they could eat” (Psa 78:24,25).

The manna came from heaven, on a daily basis, to all alike without distinction. It was like a natural product, yet superior. It was adequate for the needs of all. It was white, pure, sweet and pleasing, although there were those who despised it as “this light bread” (Num 21:5). All the people had to do was to get up early and gather it, day after day, freely provided, for forty years.

We are told: “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deu 8:3). All were provided for: the rich, the poor, the righteous, the not so righteous. David tells us, in Psa 37:25: I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread”.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” (Joh 6:35). Is he the bread of OUR lives? He is available to us freely, to all alike without distinction, on a daily basis. All we have to do is reach out for our Bibles, open the pages, and enjoy the wonderful nourishment provided through it.

Our spiritual beings, like our natural bodies, need to be fed daily. Just as an ‘all you can eat’ buffet will not stay with us all week (although some folks go through one like they think it will), so ‘gorging’ on a Sunday at Sunday School or memorial meeting will not sustain us throughout a ‘meatless’ (and ‘milkless’ and ‘breadless’) week. We need, each day, to read, meditate, pray, and use the nourishment we receive from “the bread of life”.

The day is coming when, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “On this mountain [Mount Zion, in Jerusalem] the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine — the best of meats and the finest of wines” (Isa 25:6).

What a sumptuous feast to look forward to! But, even now, we can enjoy little ‘appetisers’ whenever we open our Bibles. So let us do it daily.

Abraham Lincoln was fond of asking visitors to the White House the following questions:

“How many legs does a dog have?”

To which the usual answer was, “Four.”

And then the President asked the follow-up question:

“Now, let us say that a dog’s tail is another leg. Now, how many legs does the dog have?”

If the visitor answered, “Five”, then old Abe would smile and say, “No, he still has four legs. Because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one!”

And thus to… religious “definitions”!

Are we Christadelphians “Christian”? Are we “orthodox”? Are we “evangelical”? Are we “pentecostal”, even? What about “catholic”?

In every one of these cases, it all depends — as one old brother once put it — on “what you mean by what you say.” And we can mean very different things by what we say. In fact, two peoples can mean ENORMOUSLY different things even if they are saying precisely the same thing. (Stop and think for a moment: how many things does “I love you?” mean? Unless we know the context, and the background, and the personalities involved, and their relationship, and — especially — HOW it is said, then we really have no idea what the words are intended to convey… or HOW MUCH they are intended to convey.)

Anyway, back to religous “definitions”:

• “Christian” of course meant — originally — a follower of Christ. That of course is what all Christadelphians aspire to be… but the world is filled with people who use the same term, and the question for us is: do we want to be — more or less — associated with all of them? When the news reporters talk about “Christian gunmen” in Northern Ireland, do we still want to call ourselves “Christian”? Hence the dilemma: are we “Christian”, or aren’t we? It all depends on what you mean by what you say.
• “Orthodox” means, literally, “conforming to an established or agreed-upon pattern”. Now the question becomes: who has established and agreed upon the particular pattern (of beliefs, presumably — but perhaps also of practice) the conformity to which makes you or me “orthodox”? In what context is the term used? This makes a world of difference. But when certain churches call themselves, more or less officially, “orthodox” — as in Greek Orthodox — then, of course, we are put in a position where we are NOT “orthodox” by their assumptions — although we could argue, persuasively, that we conform to the established pattern of the first-century church much better than they.
• “Evangelical” was originally a wonderful word: taken directly from the New Testament, it transliterated the Greek word for “gospel” or “good news”. Who could ever find fault with such a word? If anyone knows the gospel, it ought to be Christadelphians, right? But then other churches make that a part of their name: there’s Evangelical Lutheran, and Free Evangelical, and African Methodist Evangelical… and who knows what others! And “evangelical” has come to describe the whole broad, inclusive group of “believers” who have been “born again” (another good Bible term all by itself, but what does IT mean?!) by some “spiritual” (ditto!) experience — with little or no regard to particular beliefs. In this situation, we have to think twice before we want to call ourselves “evangelical” either, although if anybody is “evangelical”, it ought to be us.
• “Pentecostal” alludes to the day of Pentecost, referred to in Acts 2 — when the power of the Holy Spirit was poured out upon believers at Jerusalem. Given this, “Pentecostal” pretty plainly means those who believe in, and practice, the present-day manifestation of a so-called “Holy Spirit” power to speak in strange tongues — and also to perform miracles of healing and raising the dead. Of course, this loses us pretty fast: we don’t want to be “Pentecostal”, even for a moment! On the other hand, we DO believe in what happened in Acts 2, don’t we? We just don’t believe that the same gifts and the same experiences can be manufactured at will today. And if we believe in Acts 2, along with all the rest of Scripture, does that make us, in some sense, “Pentecostal”?
• “Catholic”: now there’s a good one. The English word itself means (or maybe we should say, “originally” meant!) that which is universal, or widespread… as in the “worldwide Church of God”. By this strictly-literal definition we should be able to say, “Yes, I belong to the worldwide body of believers called Christadelphians”… or “Yes, I am a member of the catholic church, or ecclesia, of Christadelphians”. But of course, we would never want to say such a thing, because of what has happened to the word “catholic” today — particularly its almost universal application to the Roman “church”.

****

And there you are. For the time would fail me to speak of “Amended” and “Unamended”, and “clean flesh”, and “Andrewism” and “Stricklerism”, and “immortal emergence”, and “Adamic condemnation”, and “eternal death”, etc, etc… all of which may be defined differently — very differently — by this person or that… but that’s another story! Or seventeen.

Meanwhile, we’ll just go by the strictly-literal (and original) definitions, and call ourselves…

the Catholic Christian Evangelical Orthodox Pentecostal Church (the real one!). Right?

George

PS: NOW I’m in BIG trouble!

What are our ambitions, our goals in life? What are our attitudes toward work and leisure and money? Are they different than the world, or are they all too similar? What sets us apart from the masses around us who have no true hope? Is it enough that we believe differently without living differently?

I have a recurring “nightmare” that goes like this: in the counsels of heaven a new angel is assigned to my case, but in route he somehow loses my address. He checks the telephone directory only to find five fellows with the same name. So he thinks to himself, “I won’t bother going back to headquarters, because it’ll be no trouble finding the right George Booker. I’ll just watch all five of these fellows for a day or so, and I’ll be able to spot the ‘Christadelphian’ right away.”

But it is not that easy That day, and the next, the “real” George Booker does nothing to distinguish himself from the others. He kicks the dog, yells at the wife, and skips the mid-week Bible class, and even neglects his Bible readings and his prayers.

The poor bewildered angel has to wait ALL WEEK, until Sunday morning, when two George Bookers sleep in, one mows the lawn, another goes to early mass with his golf clubs in the back seat, and — finally! — the fifth one heads for the ecclesial hall. “Aha! There’s the right one!”

But just suppose I hadn’t even bothered to go to meeting that week. Would my guardian angel have EVER found me?

Once upon a time there was a young man who lived in the land of Centralia, but in his travels he had met various folks in the remote little land of Unamendia, and some others in an even more remote land, Cogaphia. To his initial surprise, he had discovered among these “others” some kindred spirits, folks who shared his most heartfelt beliefs and worldview — individuals to whom he felt at least as close as his fellow Centralians. True, some of the citizens of these other lands were not the sort who inspired such warm, fuzzy feelings… in fact, on more than one occasion, he was approached personally by other denizens of Unamendia and Cogaphia with rather blunt and rude questions: “Why are you, a Centralian, visiting here in our land?” “What mischief do you have in mind?” “You must be a Centralian spy; are you going to carry back bad reports?” Sometimes, he was strongly encouraged to leave the foreign lands, go back to his “own kind”, and never return. But he kept returning, because there were some folks there who genuinely seemed to enjoy his company, and with whom he had some heartwarming conversations and interactions.

Sometimes, when he did go back to his own land, he was questioned by his countrymen: “What do you see in those Unamendians anyway? Some of them are pretty strange characters.” “How can you have anything to do with those Cogaphians? Don’t you know that some of them are highly undesirable?”

There were times when our young man thought, “Maybe I should just move to Unamendia… or even to Cogaphia.” But then he would think, “You know, some of the Unamendians want no part of me… and some really are a little strange… that might not be pleasant”… and “Some of those Cogaphians turn and walk away when I get near… how would it be to live there fulltime?” Meanwhile, he also recognized that, for all the questions and hard looks he received when he returned home, he did have a lot of friends in Centralia, and it would be a shame to leave them behind for good.

So for years he tried to live in two (actually, three) different worlds… never quite at ease in any one of them, but never wanting to turn his back forever on the others. But his life was a real prescription for schizophrenia: when he was home in Centralia, he was afraid to talk about his friends in Unamendia and Cogaphia. And when he was in these other lands, he would try discreetly to encourage his friends either to emigrate to Centralia, or to petition Centralia to annex their lands to its country… this was usually met with politeness, but never acted upon: “Why should we go to Centralia, and live there? If they wanted to know us, they’d come here to visit us — like you do!”

Sometimes his foreign friends would even visit Centralia — a land of greater prosperity and more opportunities than their own — but he could never prevail upon them to stay for very long. “We don’t feel quite at home on your side of the border,” they would tell him. “Now if you would just open all the borders, and do away with all the immigration laws and tariffs and rulers… then everybody could come and go as they pleased.” But the young man knew such a change in the government would never occur; Centralia just didn’t work that way!

One day the man (by now not so young) looked long and hard at himself, at his children, and at his close friends in Centralia… and he realized… that while trying to be “all things to all people”, he wasn’t really a Centralian any more — he was a man without a country! “Dad,” his eldest son asked him, “are we Centralian or Unamendian or Cogaphian? I can’t remember!” And now he knew that he must do something… to reclaim his birthright. He had to be a true Centralian, and consider his fellow-countrymen first, and be a part of the community where he lived. And so he was.

But what about his old friends on the other sides of the border? He would send messages to them: “I still love you, but I can’t sneak back and forth across the borders to see you, and I can’t aid you in sneaking in and out of my country… But if you will come to Centralia, then I can assure you that you and your families will be welcome here; my fellow-countrymen will be happy to have you, but you must swear allegiance to your new land.”

Some of his old friends were angry with him, “No, thank you,” they said. “We’ll just stay where we are… and we’ll wait until Centralia drops all its border restrictions… meanwhile we’ll just keep slipping back and forth, when no one is watching, and encouraging others to do the same.”

But the man knew that Centralia would never change its laws and open all the borders — because there were some people in Unamendia and Cogaphia to whom Centralia would never allow open access into their land. So he told his friends, “If you think like the Centralians, and you want to be one of them, you will need to openly ask for citizenship, and be prepared to abide by their laws. There is no other way to receive all the benefits of Centralian citizenship. Nothing else will ever work; I’ve seen this from both sides; I’ve been there, and I’ve tried… and I know. It will be very difficult, and in the end unsatisfying, trying to live in different countries at the same time.”

Now some of his old friends were very angry with him. “You have abandoned us,” they cried. “You don’t love us any more, because you won’t come to visit us now.”

“But I can’t continue to visit like before,” he told them. “Now I must act like a Centralian. But you can move to Centralia any time you wish.”

“Never!” they cried. “We were born Unamendians and we will die the same!” Likewise said some of the Cogaphians.

But others said, “You know, our Centralian friend has a point. He still loves us, and he wants only what’s best for us. Hey, maybe we should look at this emigration business again!”

“Johnny Lingo gave eight cows to Sarita’s father.”

I’m reminded of it every time I see a woman belittling her husband or a wife withering under her husband’s scorn. I want to say to them, “You should know why Johnny Lingo paid eight cows for his wife.”

Johnny Lingo wasn’t exactly his name. But that’s what Shenkin, the manager of the guest house on the Pacific island of Kiniwata, called him. Shenkin was from Chicago and had a habit of Americanizing the names of the islanders. But Johnny was mentioned by many people in many connections. If I wanted to spend a few days on the neighboring island of Nurabandi, Johnny Lingo would put me up. If I wanted to fish he could show me where the biting was best. If it was pearls I sought, he would bring the best buys. The people of Kiniwata all spoke highly of Johnny Lingo. Yet when they spoke they smiled, and the smiles were slightly mocking.

“Get Johnny Lingo to help you find what you want and let him do the bargaining,” advised Shenkin. “Johnny knows how to make a deal.”

“Johnny Lingo!” A boy seated nearby hooted the name and rocked with laughter.

“What goes on?” I demanded. “everybody tells me to get in touch with Johnny Lingo and then breaks up. Let me in on the joke.”

“Oh, the people like to laugh,” Shenkin said, shrugging. “Johnny’s the brightest, the strongest young man in the islands. And for his age, the richest.”

“But if he’s all you say, what is there to laugh about?”

“Only one thing. Five months ago, at fall festival, Johnny came to Kiniwata and found himself a wife. He paid her father eight cows!”

I knew enough about island customs to be impressed. Two or three cows would buy a fair-to-middling wife, four or five a highly satisfactory one.

“Good Lord!” I said, “Eight cows! She must have beauty that takes your breath away.”

“She’s not ugly,” he conceded, and smiled a little. “But the kindest could only call Sarita plain. Sam Karoo, her father, was afraid she’d be left on his hands.”

“But then he got eight cows for her? Isn’t that extraordinary?”

“Never been paid before.”

“Yet you call Johnny’s wife plain?”

“I said it would be kindness to call her plain. She was skinny. She walked with her shoulders hunched and her head ducked. She was scared of her own shadow.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess there’s just no accounting for love.”

“True enough,” agreed the man. “And that’s why the villagers grin when they talk about Johnny. They get special satisfaction from the fact that the sharpest trader in the islands was bested by dull old Sam Karoo.”

“But how?”

“No one knows and everyone wonders. All the cousins were urging Sam to ask for three cows and hold out for two until he was sure Johnny’d pay only one. Then Johnny came to Sam Karoo and said, ‘Father of Sarita, I offer eight cows for your daughter.’ “

“Eight cows,” I murmured. “I’d like to meet this Johnny Lingo.”

And I wanted fish. I wanted pearls. So the next afternoon I beached my boat at Nurabandi. And I noticed as I asked directions to Johnny’s house that his name brought no sly smile to the lips of his fellow Nurabandians. And when I met the slim, serious young man, when he welcomed me with grace to his home, I was glad that from his own people he had respect unmingled with mockery. We sat in his house and talked. Then he asked, “You come here from Kiniwata?”

“Yes.”

“They speak of me on that island?”

“They say there’s nothing I might want they you can’t help me get.”

He smiled gently. “My wife is from Kiniwata.”

“Yes, I know.”

“They speak of her?”

“A little.”

“What do they say?”

“Why, just…” The question caught me off balance. “They told me you were married at festival time.”

“Nothing more?” The curve of his eyebrows told me he knew there had to be more.

“They also say the marriage settlement was eight cows.” I paused. “They wonder why.”

“They ask that?” His eyes lightened with pleasure. “Everyone in Kiniwata knows about the eight cows?”

I nodded.

“And in Nurabandi everyone knows it too.” His chest expanded with satisfaction. “Always and forever, when they speak of marriage settlements, it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid eight cows for Sarita.”

So that’s the answer, I thought: vanity.

And then I saw her. I watched her enter the room to place flowers on the table. She stood still a moment to smile at the young man beside me. Then she went swiftly out again. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. The lift of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, the sparkle of her eyes all spelled a pride to which no one could deny her the right. I turned back to Johnny Lingo and found him looking at me. “You admire her?” he murmured.

“She… she’s glorious. But she’s not Sarita from Kiniwata,” I said.

“There’s only one Sarita. Perhaps she does not look the way they say she looked in Kiniwata.”

“She doesn’t. I heard she was homely. They all make fun of you because you let yourself be cheated by Sam Karoo.”

“You think eight cows were too many?” A smile slid over his lips.

“No. But how can she be so different?”

“Do you ever think,” he asked, “what it must mean to a woman to know that her husband has settled on the lowest price for which she can be bought? And then later, when the women talk, they boast of what their husbands paid for them. One says four cows, another maybe six. How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happen to my Sarita.”

“Then you did this just to make your wife happy?”

“I wanted Sarita to be happy, yes. But I wanted more than that. You say she is different This is true. Many things can change a woman. Things that happen inside, things that happen outside. But the thing that matters most is what she thinks about herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. Now she knows she is worth more than any other woman in the islands.”

“Then you wanted –“

“I wanted to marry Sarita. I loved her and no other woman.”

“But — ” I was close to understanding.

“But,” he finished softly, “I wanted an eight-cow wife.”

What a great price has been paid by Christ to “buy” us to be his “bride”! Do we truly appreciate that? Has the knowledge of the great value he placed upon us changed us as it should?

“You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1Co 6:20).

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1Pe 1:18,19).

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph 5:25-27).

His name meant “Good Luck”, and he lived in an age when Lady Luck was even more fervently worshiped than at modern race-tracks or lottery machines.

Young “Lucky” had had a hard day; but slipping away after the evening meal, he had found his way to the meeting place to hear the famous Paul. However, the room was warm, and after several hours even the apostle’s impassioned discourse was not enough. He dozed, he slumped in his window seat — no one paid any attention — and then he disappeared! Did anyone reflect on his name as “Lucky” lay still on the dark street below? Had his “luck” finally run out? Did someone remember the Preacher’s words: “Time and chance happeneth to all men” (Ecc 9:11)? Was it just “chance” that had done in poor Eutychus? (This often-misapplied verse should yield its true meaning to a bit of concordance work on the word “chance”.)

Or… another possibility. Had this “accident” happened to the young sleeper so “that the works of God should be made manifest in him”? (John 9:3). Do not all things — even a fatal fall from an upper window -work together for good to them that love God (Rom 8:28)? Paul assures us that “whether we wake or sleep” we shall live together with Christ (1Th 5:10).

Brethren, have we fallen asleep in the “back row” because the “night” is long? Or have we suffered a reversal of “fortune” and blamed it all on “chance”? There may be a little “Eutychus” in all of us! Maybe a great fall is just the thing we need to wake us from our “sleep”. If it is, then the Father in His infinite patience and mercy will see to it that we receive it.

“And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, ‘Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him'” (Acts 20:10).

Let us wake from our “falls” with a greater awareness of the wonder of God’s healing grace. “Whom He loveth He chasteneth” (Heb 12:6) -and the dozing disciple may awake with a jolt. The “fall” may be unpleasant, but the “bringing up alive” will be the source of “not a little comfort” (Acts 20:12).

This was written by an 8-year-old, Danny Dutton, of Chula Vista, California, for his third-grade homework assignment. The assignment was to explain God.

EXPLAIN GOD

One of God’s main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die, so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn’t make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way He doesn’t have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leaves that to mothers and fathers.

God’s second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times beside bedtime. God doesn’t have time to listen to the radio or TV because of this.

God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn’t go wasting His time by going over your Mom and Dad’s head asking for something they said you couldn’t have.

Atheists are people who don’t believe in God. I don’t think there are any in Chula Vista. At least there aren’t any who come to our church.

Jesus is God’s Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing miracles and people finally got tired of him preaching to them and they crucified him. But He was good and kind, like his Father, and he told His Father that they didn’t know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said “Okay!”

His Dad (God) appreciated everything that he had done and all his hard work on earth, so He told him he didn’t have to go out on the road anymore. He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now he helps his Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones he can take care of himself without having to bother God. Like a secretary, only more important. You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to help you because they got it worked out — so one of them is on duty all the time.

You should always go to church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there’s anybody you want to make happy, it’s God. Don’t skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong. And besides the sun doesn’t come out at the beach until noon anyway.

If you don’t believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can’t go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It is good to know He’s around you when you’re scared in the dark or when you can’t swim and you get thrown into real deep water by big kids.

But… you shouldn’t just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back anytime He pleases. And… that’s why I believe in God.