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TIME IN THE WELL


Time: Early Spring, Place: a small cabin 8 miles up a dirt road, several miles from a small town in northern Idaho. The water comes out of the mountains, from the melting snow at a powerful rate of speed, gathering momentum ,volume, and velocity as it rushes to its destination, the ocean, ultimately. It becomes louder with each mile traveled, until it is a deafening roar, an entity of size and sound without equal in its normally peaceful environment. The contrast between the lush, silent forest and the torrent is worthy of note.

It is in this setting we find a cabin, rustic, but with some modern conveniences; electricity, and a small pump feeding the tiny interior with running water, and of course, the ubiquitous mice.

It was the mice that caused my mood this particular a.m. to be so unreasonable. I was attempting to scour my kitchen of all the traces of my little furry fiends.

One of their most annoying habits is to check the contents of any bag or box of anything in the kitchen, always the back of the bottom of the box. So I never knew when I took something out of a cabinet if I would be spilling flour or rice or something else all over just taking it out.

In order to clean the ravaged kitchen I needed copious amounts of water, and our pump wasn’t working! Familiar with this particular aberration, and remembering that the landlord had promised to fix it tomorrow, every day for a week, I grumbled as I headed down the steep slope to the pump-house, next to the noisy river. No one saw or heard me go down there and no one knew where I was, but in my bad mood I never stopped to think of minor details like those. I knew that with a few adjustments I could fix it enough to get my dishes done.

Of course, if I wanted to wait, the pressure would be built up in a few hours. The dishes didn’t really need to be done right then, but I didn’t stop to think of that either, though I’d have plenty of time later to regret my lack of foresight. I was focused on leaving nothing for my arch-enemies to nibble on. So out the door I went.

My husband didn’t know I was leaving because his back was to me while he was mowing the lawn, (lawn? what lawn? We lived 8 miles up a dirt road, so who needed a lawn? But, what was important to him was a lawn, to me it was a couple of gallons of water that I could have dipped from the river, but I wanted them from the pump, thank you.

The pumphouse was an oversized dog-house, nominally insulated against the harsh Idaho winters. There was not much inside. A small pump, not secured, sitting on the concrete floor, an outlet set into the concrete raised up about three inches, a light bulb, which was the only heat source and a thin board on the floor covering what

I’d been told was the well-hole. Muttering and out-of-sorts because I was doing what I consider to be a Man’s work I started adjusting the screws that are supposed to encourage the pump to do its job, pump my cleaning water!

By the way, I really didn’t know what I was doing anyway. While I was fiddling, I was standing on the well-hole cover and I idly wondered just how big the well-hole was. It was at that very instant that I heard a loud craaaack and I began to fall!

I don’t know why, I didn’t then, but do now, of course, it was God’s protection, my elbows flew out and caught me as I made a partial descent into oblivion.

It never occurred to me that there was ever any danger because most people in that area never dug their wells out, just left it the size of the well-digger pipe, about 6 inches in circumference.

But in answer to my question this hole was about three feet in diameter, it actually was a culvert like the ones that go under country roads to accommodate run-off, so the roads won’t flood. It accommodated me quite nicely and then some. It was all I could do to keep myself from falling in the hole and I knew it was just a matter of time before I fell in and drowned.

The picture here is of me suspended in the well, caught by my elbows.

Actually, what was really bothering me was that I didn’t want my feet to touch the water below, because I thought it was just a few feet down and I thought I might touch a dead rat floating in the water. (It was 18 feet down, I later learned)

I was using much of my energy holding my feet up. I tried kicking my shoes off and using what toenails I might have to climb up, but the sides were very slimy. And now I was shoeless, Great so how was I to walk back up the bank to get back into the cabin. “You Idiot,” I thought, “You’re going to die, you won’t have to walk ever again! Yeah, because no one even knows I’m here, and they won’t either, until the water tastes bad.”

I looked around to find some way out of there and I pulled experimentally on a two-by-four holding up a piece of insulation and it came off in my hand, but it was long enough to tuck under my arm and effectively narrow the hole and it was easier to hold myself up. On my other side was the raised power outlet and I wrapped my other arm around that but I was losing strength fast.

I was in adrenaline shock already because I went from zero to panic in minus time and I was already exhausted, my fight or flight instincts being of no avail in this instance. I reached out for the pump to pull myself out with and it came towards me with dismaying ease. Of course yelling would do no good due to the volume of sound from the river.

Okay, if all else fails, try to think. What would McGyver do? I was weak with horror at my predicament and knew I would die a very stupid death soon.Over in the corner was a pile of rope with a colander attached at one end and a piece of broom handle at the other. The door of the pumphouse was open mocking me and the sun beating in on me making me very thirsty, well, soon I’d have all the water I didn’t want. Okay, back to McGyver, I took the end of the rope with the broom stick taped to it and threw it out the open door trying to wedge it in between the door and frame.

McGyver could do it in two throws, I know, I’ve seen him do harder stuff, but I couldn’t do anything.

Let’s see, there must be something else to try. Oh, yes, there’s always God, I’d always felt His call on my life but I was never ready to do anything like THAT yet... So, here was my very eloquent prayer, “

Okay, God, I know you want me to serve you, and I’m going to die now. You know I’m not afraid of death, It’s the dying part I’m not wild about. I’m sure flailing around in tight quarters in and among dead rats, won’t last long but it won’t be a very charming way to die, so I’ll tell you what. This is an impossible situation, I have no rescue, but if you get me outta here I’ll serve you in whatever way you want.”

Now, I had some more words with Him, because I didn’t get rescued right away, but it was all along the same line. After what seemed like about three hours, though in reality only a mere twenty minutes, my husband, who said he knew I was there all along, came down to check on me. At first all he saw was my head poking out of the hole and he started to leave I yelled for him to come back, and he pulled me out.

Isaiah chapter 40; verse 31: Those who wait on (hope in) the lord will renew their Strength They will soar on wings like eagles they will run and not grow weary,they will walk and not be faint.

We are all familiar with this passage of scripture, but glance upward a bit to verse 29: He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary,and young men stumble and fall

This shows us that we are weak and powerless on our own. He allows us to stumble along until the day that we know we are weak after our own stupidity and carelessness puts us in a position where He is all we have left and we humble ourselves to acknowledge what we really knew, in our hearts all along, JESUS is Lord!

One of my favorite verses is Psalms 138, verse 6 Though the Lord is on High, he looks upon the lowly (humble) but the proud he knows from afar.

James Chapter 4, verse 6 says it this way: God opposes the proud but God gives grace to the humble.

When we are ready to wait on the Lord, he will renew our strength, but only if we are humble enough to admit we can’t be our own god.

LORD, please see how frail I am, remember that I am made of dust, have mercy on me O LORD. I cannot even manage humility on my own. Indeed I have so many gods of my own devising, I lean on my own strength, as though I didn’t need you for everything!. Help me to seek guidance for you for all my tasks, desires, needs and all my sustenance. Thank you, JESUS Amen.


CHICKEN CHRISTIANS


As I mentioned earlier, I used to order my chicks and get them in the mail. They came from Iowa and arrive at the Post office at about two days old and chirping frantically. I also told you that they were kept in the bathroom until they were old enough to survive the cool spring nights in their coop.

The first time I ordered chicks, it was the best day of my life up until that day. All my little chirppers arrived safely and I was thrilled to finally embark upon “farm life.” We lived in a shack, not much better than a well-built chicken coop, the aforementioned hundred-year-old house. The walls in the bathroom were exactly ¼ inch plywood thick, when it was 30 degrees below outside, it was 30 degrees below inside.

This is probably why there was no plumbing, hardly, in the bathroom. Actually there was one pipe that was under the bathroom floor which was sealed off and the water in it froze, we didn’t know of its existence until it thawed out, and broke, in June!

Back to the chickens, I had a heater next to the box where the chicks were kept to keep them warm, and a light-bulb suspended over the top, the chirping was deafening, and the fluff mess abundant, so we kept the door closed.

This spring marked the second year in that house and we were ready to move up in the world. To say that we were poor at that time, by the way, would only minimize the true poverty we actually experienced. To buy fresh meat, for instance, my husband and I had to work all morning to buy hamburger for one meal. So, these chickens were an investment in our future. I learned one valuable lesson from watching the old TV show “THE WALTONS” even though they wore terrible clothes, at least they always ate well, and I knew that GREEN ACRES was the place to be.

We had the opportunity to move to the ranch I’d told you about previously, so we drove out to assess the situation and decide how to proceed.

I stayed at the ranch while my husband returned to the old place for something, and I waited and waited for him to return. He was gone a very long time so I called back there and was informed that there was a fire at our house in my absence.

It seems that the combination of the fluff mess the chickens generate, and either the light-bulb or heater created a ripe condition for a fire. Fortunately we had no plumbing so we’d run a hose through a wall from the kitchen, for a shower. It was this hose that was used to put out the fire.

Since the house was so old, normally it would have burned to the ground in two minutes. Having no plumbing and keeping the door closed, saved our home.

My husband did manage to save the chicks, he put them in the car, which, though the temperature was very cold still was warm enough sitting in the sunshine to keep my critters safe. The chickens were soon old enough to live outside so they moved into the old travel trailer.

Moving day found us transporting our possessions like the old truck loaded in “THE GRAPES OF WRATH”, Next trip to bring the animals. We had adopted a wild dog who moved in under our house in the winter and was starving, and we couldn’t just leave her, so I trapped her and loaded the cage in the truck. Also the goat, the dog entourage, and the trailer hooked up in the rear. The cats were installed (literally, one cat clung to the door panel like a new handle) in the cab and I felt like Marlin Perkins in “THE WILD KINGDOM” traveling the dusty plains of the Savannah with my own personal wild kingdom.

I made a mistake when we got there. I deposited the trailer/chicken coop in the backyard where I had to walk all the way around the farm to get there to do all my little chicken-tending stuff. So in order to gather the eggs I had to walk a block or so every day. This wasn’t efficient, so I hired a friend to move the trailer to the front.


* *


Here are a few truths about chickens, these may seem like old wives’ tales, but wives don’t get old by being stupid,

1) Chickens always go home to roost (roosting is not a cooking method, it means to sleep).
2) Chickens go to bed with the sun (when the sun goes down, the chickens go ‘home’ and to bed.)
3) Chickens have a pecking order. A pecking order means that chickens have their own ideas about who is the best, smartest, prettiest, etc. These self-imposed rules are important to them and often determines who lives and who dies.

I told my friend who was to move the chickens, that they had to be moved in the evening after they’d all gone in for the night. It was so long before he moved it I’d given up on him and wasn’t home when he finally got around to it.

He moved the chicken coop in the early afternoon. That night and for several weeks afterward I was outside in the dark with a flashlight picking the chickens out of the trees like warm, ripe fruit (If you approach a chicken in daylight he’ll run away, so all chicken-catching must be done in the dark) Finally, after what seemed like years they all got the idea, home is moved!

I had become lax in my breeding program (we hadn’t eaten the red roosters) and we ended up with two barnyard bullies- FIGHTING COCKS. Even as young roosters they would square off and go into fighting stance. A friend gave me a rooster she didn’t want and I put him in with the rest of the flock, without really thinking about it. That night I counted the chickens in the coop before I closed it for the night as usual, and the new rooster was missing. I found him bloody and frightened, hiding out in one of the outbuildings behind the garage. Eventually, due to the lack of protection he was eaten by the coyotes who prowled around looking for an easy meal.

Chickens are cannibals, also, we used to take them all our garbage to eat and one day we accidentally gave them some chicken bones too. They consider them a delicacy. They play a game of eating them, one running around squawking loudly with the bone in its beak so the others would chase it. Then chicken #one would drop it, take a quick bite and another would take the bone and the game would go on. We called this gruesome game chicken hockey. This is not funny because if a chicken had an accident, like a barbed-wire cut or the like, the others, smelling blood would peck it to death.

As a contrast, I had a special goose I’d named moonboots, who was lame in one foot. The other geese would crowd around him at night to keep him warm, because he wasn’t as healthy as the rest. Another time I had a dog who didn’t know any better, broke a duck’s leg in play. The other ducks kept him warm, and I dunked him in water, carefully, once in a while to keep him healthy while he healed. He went on to become a productive member of his duck flock.

What kind of Christians are we? Do we bully the odd ones until they run away to escape us, ending up as a tasty meal for the enemy. Do we use our sharp tongues to tear up the wounded, until they are dead by our doing, whether physically or destroyed ministries? Do we nurture or do we destroy, do we do God’s work or Satan’s? Are we part of the problem or part of the solution? When we condemn a fellow Christian, instead of praying for him, the Bible has this to say to us:

Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Romans 14;4

Jesus said, “By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35

Saint Paul wrote, “be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves”. Romans 12:10, And also, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” Galatians 5:15

Proverbs says this about gossiping; 11:13 A gossip betrays a confidence. 16:28 A gossip separates close friends. 26:20 but without gossip a quarrel dies down. 26:22 The words of a gossip are like choice morsels, they go down to a man’s inmost parts.

The Bible describes our spirit as being our inmost part, the King James version calls it the bowels, therefore gossip not only hurts those gossiped about BUT THE GOSSIPER AND THE LISTENER AS WELL.

But that’s not the only way we have of biting and devouring. II Cor. 12:20: “...I am afraid that there my be quarreling, jealousy,outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance,and disorder.” Let’s take these one at a time.

Quarreling, we all know what that means but Romans 14:1 says, “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.” This passage is referring to the eating of meat, which was a big issue at the time. It can also refer to other disputable matters like, the interpretation of a certain section of scripture, the version of the Bible someone uses, whether a person believes that Christ will return before or after a certain event, or some other non-salvation issue. Remember, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged...” Matthew 7:1-2

Jealousy; desiring with (implied) anger and resentment about our own status or something someone else has or is. This is pretty much self-explanatory and is probably clear as to why it is not good.

Next is Outbursts of anger ; (ouch), where we go out of control and shout or raise our voice in rage.

Factions; means Cliques or exclusive groups. This can be as innocent as just hanging with your buddies, and not inviting the “stranger” to participate with you. Jesus said to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Slander; saying or hinting an untruth about someone else. This includes telling partial truths in order to get your listener to believe an untruth, without really outright lying.

Arrogance; believing oneself or one’s group to be better or more ‘spiritual’(hello) than someone else.

Disorder; which is pretty self-explanatory. Our God is not a God of confusion, neither then, should we foster confusion. “He who does not gather with me scatters. “Matt. 12:20. “We are Christ’s body here on earth”, “Therefore honor God with your body”, “From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” I 1Cor.12:27, 7:14, and Ephesians 4:16.

So our goal is for all be in the same Honda, that is in one Accord. Loving one another, nurturing one another and lifting each other up so we are a healthy body, doing Christ’s work here in our training ground. Jesus said,
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much...” Luke 16:10 We sing, about ruling and reigning with Christ, but can we be trusted with little now, and with the much then? Some people have flashy ministries now, but how is their love quotient. Is their ministry first in their life or is the concern for the brothers and sisters first?

It seems we are always rushing around to help some godless person, but Galatians 6:10 says:
As we have opportunity, let us do good to all, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE FAMILY OF BELIEVERS.(EMPHASIS MINE.).

O LORD my God, put a guard on my tongue to keep me from speaking hurt. Put a fence around my heart to keep Satan from planting wounds there. Close the gates of my ears so that I no longer hear the whispers of the enemy, saying,”so-and-so, said That? How awful, you should really be angry”. I want to learn to be a peacemaker not a person who harbors offense. God help me not to rehearse the pain but to rejoice with the truth, which is that you have overcome the world, and I can too. Thank you JESUS, Amen.


THERE’S A RAT IN YOUR HOUSE


Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest. What on earth does that mean. Could it mean that we can actually get so wrapped up with the moment that some major, but back-burner item gets missed?

This is a story about a rat, I never saw it but it was close to me, much closer than I ever realized.

I owned, or should I say, was tolerated by a cat named D-Con. When I got married he went on our honeymoon with us, to the woods.

From the moment he was born he was an adventurer. He was one of 5 cats born to my house-cat in my upstairs closet. Within two weeks when most kittens are just starting to open their eyes and being able to find their mama, D- Con was starting to follow me around when I would walk by him. At three weeks he tried the stairs, and by 5 weeks he was all over the house following me.

So, when I got married he was used to traveling and naturally came with us on our 300 mile car trip.

We went camping and even in the woods he followed. We tried to keep him in a basket while we went hiking but he broke out and tagged along. Over hill, over dale, across log bridges and even swimming a stream once, he dogged (pardon me) us.

By this time D-Con was a full-grown cat, weighing in at a whopping 18 pounds, he was bigger than both of my little dogs. At night while we were in our tent, we could hear D-Con prowling the hills around us trolling for trouble. Mewing in that aggressive way a male cat has for letting all comers know that here was a cat to reckoned with. Of course old D-Con was no match for a pack of coyotes but he was blissfully unaware of this, and for some reason they kept their distance from the little mad one as he may have been named by the truly dangerous creatures out there. For instance, there were cougars, bears, lots of coyotes and owls (I’d seen one owl standing three feet high with a wingspan of maybe 6 feet, definitely a cat danger). As is often the case, the crazy ones have a protection all their own, and D-Con continued his nightly treks for most of the next 6 months. ( We’d moved out in the same spot we’d camped on.)

A trapper friend once told us that there were rats in those parts that no cat would ever tangle with because these were vicious varmints. (Trappers talk like that, even well-educated ones, I think its part of the trapper code or something). These rats are called pack rats. Pack rats have a peculiar tail for a rat, it is not hairless like other rat’s tail, it is hairy, not real hairy mind you, just a little hairy. Our yard was littered with these tails, when the trapper said no cat would tangle with a pack rat, I said, “then pack rats must shed their tails, because D-Con brings home a trophy almost every night”.

Later, we moved out to that shack in town that I’ve mentioned before. D-Con loved it, lots of other cats to bully, so little time. Lots of mice to nibble on too, mice were his specialty. The years rolled on, and for a fighting Tom they take their toll. He still appeared to be in his prime but somewhere along the line he learned that he was mortal, that death was a distinct possibility, maybe, not very far away either. Now, we jump back to moving day to the ranch.

All the animals were moved and I unloaded all the stuff in the house. At that time I had a 6# Poodle, a hyper 30# sheltie, who forgot to stop growing at sheltie-size and was almost collie sized, but very thin because she never stopped moving. Also, I had two cats, my old faithful female lynx-point Siamese and D-Con, who only was tolerating the move, for how can you keep them down on the farm, when they’ve tasted city life? He later packed his bag and moved back to town and was never seen again.

The house was very damp, even though it was in a desert, because the irrigation pipe, which ran under the house had broken some time earlier, and left the house humid, to say the least. The house had been uninhabited, by people, for years.

There was a broken window in the living room, and a trail of too-large-to-be-mouse-droppings led to an old couch and behind it. Courageously I pulled the couch away from the wall and.... Nothing just more droppings. Just as an aside, the cats broke this window out again, years later and brought mice in to play with!

I don’t remember just why but I was doing this move on my own, and I wanted to get settled and dried out before night. I put a patch over the hole in the window and figured I was safe from whatever “used” to live there, because it had clearly moved on, or so I bravely told myself.

Just to be safe though, from those pesky vicious mice I scatted a new mouse-chow I found called MAYHEM.

MAYHEM was guaranteed to kill mice for a radius of a block around your house. It did this by being so tasty to mice that they would take it back to their nests feeding their nasty little babies this wonderful new food. I put a generous amount everywhere my dogs and cats couldn’t reach it because it was just as tasty to them, and just as lethal.

I ran out of this wonder poison and ended up setting a small package of the good old stand-by D-con (the poison) in my cupboard. Just in case some of the holes in the kitchen had mice hidden in them, biding their time until I wasn’t expecting them, then rushing out to scare me!

I put my clothes in the drawers and made the bed. I could see that the animals were all getting edgy and I assured myself that it was just that it was a new place. I kept them all in so they could get used to their new place. Now it was dark and I crawled into my damp bed and tried to find a comfortable dry warm spot. Before I knew it, every one of the animals was in the bed with me. Okay, You guys, its all right for the poodle and the female cat but the Collie! and D-Con! What are they up to? Night was marked by fitful sleep at best. Every time I kicked the collie and D-Con off the bed back they’d be back as soon as I seemed to be asleep.

Morning was the typical beautiful sunshiny event, for that area. I went to my drawer to get my shirt and underneath was a perfect handful of that poison I had put only in the cupboard two rooms away!. So what’s up? I cleaned out the whole dresser and found a nest of dead mice under the bottom drawer with the MAYHEM mixed in with them. There were some of those large mouse droppings in other drawers which I dumped out outdoors .

I checked the cupboard and found more large droppings around the D-con which had been deposited in my room the night before. Later I learned that the large droppings were pack rat droppings and that a pack rat had come into my room, walked around my bed or maybe even walked across it while I slept and left the D-con poison which it had taken from the kitchen. Apparently it had been thumbing its pointy little nose at me by carrying that poison in its mouth and bringing it into my bedroom. All I could think of was just how many trips did it take to get that much transported or was it just a very, very large pack rat?

I did get the last laugh though because he apparently ingested enough to kill him or else he moved.

Anyway, the moral or whatever of this story is that everyone knew but me that there was a rat in my house! The animals knew enough to be afraid, I was totally unaware.

Proverbs 30:12 says (that there are) ...those who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not cleansed of their filth (NIV). There are times that everyone around us knows that there is a rat in our house but us.

David wrote, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.Psalms 139:23-24

The way we to be led in the way everlasting is to let and even encourage God to help us to find the rats in our house and to clean them out.

And, by the way, before anyone gets too upset about my war on rodents please remember that they do carry disease, actually the Bubonic plague was carried by mice and rats. They are not cute when they are loose in my house bent on destruction.

And if anyone thinks that mice are cute, they can have my share.

Lord, search my heart and know my wicked ways, test me and reveal my anxious thoughts, the times I’ve not trusted you by worrying about the future, and by not inquiring of you, forgive me, and remove the rats from my house. Thank you JESUS ,Amen.


UNITY IN THE BODY


Once upon a time, (don’t you love it when stories start like this, you just know it’ll end with Happily ever after). Anyway there was a time, you could call it now, in a very close country actually right here, wherever here is for you, there was a body that was not very happy. The eyes decided that they were the King of the body and the only important member of the body, because they were the only ones who could see. The hands were told that they were unneeded because they weren’t eyes. As a result, the hands quit doing anything and the body could see but not do. The next to quit were the feet. So, now the body could see but not move or do anything. Every other function of the body stopped when it was made clear to them that it wasn’t needed. Soon only the eyes and the mouth, who was appointed Chancellor, were working and the rest of the body just sat around decaying.

Saint Paul spoke of the Christian Church as being Christ’s body, here on Earth, with Jesus as being the Head of this body. We all know that a body cannot live without a head. As Jesus is our head we have every opportunity to be a very powerful and effective body at that. But opportunity is all we have, Jesus forces nothing on us. We can do his will here on Earth or we can go our own way, AND BE GOATS.

Sometimes we believe that the Bible, written so long ago, isn’t relative to our needs today. We think of the schisms we have in our society and our churches as being unique to our age. This is not true, the early church also struggled with problems of race and gender.

The first Christian church was made up entirely of JEWS. which for some people seems to come as a shock. Read Acts 10, about Peter’s vision of unclean animals, then what God meant by that vision, which was that Gentiles were not to be considered to be unclean, and that Peter was to preach to them. Read Acts 11 and see the other Apostle’s reaction to Peter’s “outrageous” action, of going into Cornelius’ home. Even though Isaiah in chapter 49:6 in speaking of the coming Messiah says: “....I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

The Jews were bigots who believed that the Messiah was only for the ‘chosen’ people. We see, then, that race bigotry is not a new thing as we read what the Jews thought of Peter when he got back from evangelizing at Cornelius’ house, in Acts 11.

Women, also were held in very low esteem by the Jewish society of that day. Part of the traditional prayer a Jewish male made every day was “Thank you God, for not making me a female...”

Saint Paul addressed these problems in Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, (a non-Jew was referred to as Greek) slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. In speaking of the joining of the original church, which was a Jewish sect, made up entirely of Jews with the Gentile Christian

Saint Paul said: For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. Ephesians 2:14-16 And also “...Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone, In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2:20-21

Ephesians 5:20 says, For we are all members of his body. As to the different functions in the body, equivalent to the hands, feet and the rest, I Corinthians 12:12-26 tells us that we are a body made up of many parts, and that we have one Spirit. No one part is more important or is dispensable in the well-functioning body. Sadly, today, we have Churches where only the eyes and mouth are working parts. The rest of the body basically keeps the pews warm.

Often we have the entirely human invention of chain-of-command government in the churches where essentially the body is run by its joints. The fingers request permission from the hands, who in turn seek counsel from the lower arm and so on. God made our body to respond to the head alone but in conjunction with the other parts for smooth operations. In other words, when my fingers reach for a glass of water in response to my brain’s request for a thirst-quencher, they do so with the assistance of the rest of my body. There is no anarchy in God’s plan, no lone Ranger stuff, no middle-management. There is accountability, of course, and we do have overseers who lead and guide us. Ephesians 6:1 says:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right Children = us, the Lord’s children. Parents in the Lord means our overseers.

All is done by the leading of the Holy Spirit through each part of the body, each with its own area of expertise (gifting from God) and each assisting the workings of the other parts in their roles as members of the body of Christ. As it says in Colossians 3:13,

Bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. So that you will not hinder the body of which you are a member from doing the job that God has for it.

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. I Cor. 12:26

Therefore, as God’s Chosen people, holy and dearly loved clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience....Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Col 3:12, 13, 14

God is doing this work in us and for us, He loves us all equally, and we are all at different stages of maturity. We are all different and praise God for that, it is He who is working this mess of tangled fibers (to use another analogy) into a beautiful tapestry, it functions as well as the “fibers” yield to Him and allow Him to work them into the design. Right now we are all too close to see what God sees not as a work-in-progress, but a masterpiece, finished and ready to present to Jesus as His bride (to go back to the body analogy), perfect and radiant.

So, our ultimate goal is unity- not the humanistic emphasis (on self) of diversity, and multiplicity. A picture of integral harmony, using our varied gifts and personalities, and kinds, in a perfect union under the head-ship of Jesus as seen in the description of us being His body with uses and dependencies on each other, perfect in all our imperfections.

And we will rule and reign with Jesus Christ forever, and they lived happily ever after.

O God, please use me in your service, help me to be an instrument of your peace, to plant harmony, where there is discord, to give where there is take, to love where there is hurt, to know your ways, so that I can walk in your truth. And help us all to promote unity, not to invite the poison of partisanism. Thank you, JESUS, Amen.

Thank you for reading my little book and may GOD richly bless you