Reunions

          Reunions can be interesting events.  If you were active in your school and class it can be fun to renew friendships with those with whom you spent many hours with years ago.  Of course you should be prepared for changed looks, forgotten names and both sad and happy stories.  And you'll be surprised how much older your friends look when you haven't changed at all.

          My wife has never attended any of her high school reunions because she never felt close to those in her class.  I have attended one of my college reunions and it was very interesting, mostly because members of our basketball team were there and we had spent many hours together during our four years in college.

           I've also attended all of my high school reunions and have generally enjoyed them.  I was class president for my junior and senior years and, as a result, was very involved with the class.  Now I have become just the official "prayer" for the meals.  But that is fine since it gives me a chance to share my faith through my prayer.

          As we've gotten older, members of our class have decided that we should meet more often than the usual 5 and 10 year gatherings.  So for the past three years we have had "birthday celebration" reunions at a location in Lititz.  Usually we have 30-40 show up out of a class which I think graduated about 88 back in 1959.

          This week we celebrated our 77th birthdays with a picnic type gathering in a church in Lititz.  We had planned to meet in the Lititz Springs Park, but recent flooding there forced us to move to the church. We shared memories and food and took pictures. We all seemed older and slower - where have all the years gone?  I actually started a mini-web page for the class (fbfawana.com/1959.html) to share with those who live too far away to come.  Next year is our 60th reunion so we are planning something bigger - and probably more expensive - the first week in June to celebrate.

          But reunions can have some interesting and unexpected outcomes.  Here is a story about one reunion that was shared at our recent gathering.

          At the 60th high school reunion he was a widower and she was a widow.  They had known each other for a number of years, having been high school classmates and having attended class reunions in the past, without fail.

          At this reunion the widower and the widow made a foursome with two other singles.  They had a wonderful evening, their spirits high, with the widower throwing admiring glances across the table ... and the widow smiling coyly back at him.  Finally during one dance, he worked up his courage to ask her, "Will you marry me?"  After about six seconds of careful consideration, she answered, "Yes ... yes!!!"  Needless to say, the evening ended on a happy note for the widower.

          However, the next morning he was troubled.  Did she say yes or did she say no?  He couldn't remember.  Try as he would, he just could not recall.  He went over and over the conversation of the previous evening, but his mind was a blank.  He remembered asking the question, but for the life of him could not recall he response.

          With fear and trepidation, he picked up the phone and called her.  First, he explained that he couldn't remember as well as he used to.  Then he reviewed the past evening.  As he gained a little more courage, he then inquired of her, "When I asked if you would marry me, did you say yes or did you say no?"  

         "Why you silly man", she replied, "I said yes.  Yes I will!  And I mean it with all my heart!"

         The widower was delighted.  He felt his heart skip a beat.  Then she continued.  "And I'm so glad you called, because I couldn't remember who asked me."

         So be very careful as you get older and attend reunions.  Memories can begin to fail and you better guard what you do and say.

"The Green Thing"

          This article was contributed by a dear friend, Eleanor Ruch.  I don't know who the actual author is, but as an "old guy" I found it very interesting.  I  hope that you too will also enjoy it.

          Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.

         The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

         The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

         The older lady said that she was right, our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain: Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

          Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable, besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scriblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

          We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator or elevator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right, we didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

           Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right, we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

           Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house  - not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. 

         Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn.     We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right, we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

           We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

          Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

         But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

When God Says "No"

         Recently a dear friend sent me this article by John Piper.  It came at a good time and I felt that I should share it with you in case you sometimes have the same questions.

          How do you respond to a no from God when you pray for good things?  "No" often hurts..   I think few things have caused me to search my soul and search the Scriptures more than the fact that I have called upon the Lord to do things - which I think are in perfect accord with his will, according to Scripture - and yet he has not, or not yet, seen fit to grant, or at least grant in the way that I asked or hoped for. I don't look upon the problem of unanswered prayer in a theoretical way, but in a very personal and sometimes gut-wrenching way.

          I don't claim to have a final answer. I hope someday to understand this better and to have gone deeper with God in prayer so that I understand both from Scripture and from experience how he deals with his children.   He has taught me some things, and it might be helpful if I give two Bible passages for you to think about and see whether or not they take you deeper than I've gone into the mind and heart of God with regard to the way he answers his children when they ask him for things.

          One of the texts is Matthew 7:7–11. I saw it years and years ago, and so it's had a wonderful effect over the years. The other one is a brand-new insight from Genesis 17, and it's right off my devotional front burner. So let me take this one at a time.

          Fish and Serpents - Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 7:7–11: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." Then he uses this analogy, which helps me so much: "Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

          That's an amazing analogy that draws us in to thinking about how we treat our children, and how God treats his children. What's striking here is that God promises to give good things to his children when they ask. It's striking, because it doesn't say he gives them precisely what they ask for.   Since he's comparing himself to our own parenting, we know that's the case. We don't give our children, especially when they're two or three years old, everything they ask for. They don't know all that is good for them.

          I remember once my son Benjamin asked me for a cracker. I'm totally eager to give him a cracker at snack time. I reached for the box, and I noticed they have mold on them. I tell him I can't give him a cracker because it has fuzz on it. He says, "I'll eat the fuzz." I wouldn't give it to him, because I knew better than he did. I knew that mold was not good for him. That day, he got something he didn't ask for and didn't want as much as he wanted a cracker. But deep down he would have wanted it more if he knew what was good for him.

          I think the words of Jesus point us in this direction when dealing with unanswered prayer. Now, that may sound like a nice solution, but I know what some people are thinking - just like what I'm thinking. We ask glorious things of God, like the conversion of our family, and we can't imagine how it could be bad for us. How could it be moldy to have God save our family?

          I don't presume to say this is a quick fix, and yet I do think the principle laid there should be embraced even if the application of it to all situations is a little harder for us to grasp. That's the first help that God has given me in regard to how prayers are sometimes answered differently than we would ask.

          Here's the other one. In a sense, this passage from Genesis 17 is an application in one way of what we've just seen in Matthew 7. Here's the text: "And God said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her." Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, "Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" And Abraham said to God, "Oh that Ishmael might live before you!" (Genesis 17:15–18)

          In other words, Abraham prayed, "God, let Ishmael be the chosen seed." The text continues.  God said, "No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation." (Genesis 17:19–20)

          Now, Abraham had asked God in prayer that Ishmael would be the son of promise. God says explicitly, "No." Now, God might have just left it at that, gone on, and done to Ishmael whatever he was going to do to Ishmael. Instead, he takes pains to say, "I have heard you. That's what makes me do what I'm going to do to Ishmael. I have heard you, and that's why I'm going to bless Ishmael the way I'm going to bless him. You have asked me to bless Ishmael, and I'm not going to do it the way you ask, but I am going to do it, and I'm doing it because I heard you."

          God Never Does Nothing.   Now, what should we learn from this about God's no to our prayers? Here's the least I think we can learn. Even when God says no to the specific intention of our prayer, it does not mean there's no blessing in response to the prayer. In fact, I would go so far as to say (bringing in other texts, especially Matthew 7) that when we pray with a right heart, we never, never pray in vain.

          My colleague Tom Steller used to say, "God never does nothing in answer to prayer." These two passages - Matthew 7, Genesis 17 -  along with numerous others, have kept me for sixty years crying out to God even when it seems that the specific thing I'm asking for is not granted. I really believe that God always gives good things to his children precisely because we ask him, and always because we ask him.  The blessings we receive may not be in the form of the things we ask for, but they are owing to our prayers. They're owing to our prayers, and they're good.

         I think a day is coming, according to Revelation 8:1–5, when all the prayers that have ever been prayed by God's faithful people, which over thousands of years served as a pleasing incense and aroma before the throne of God, will be poured out on the earth in the consummation of history. They will bring about the consummation of history, and it will be plain that not one expression of "hallowed be thy name" or "thy kingdom come" or "thy will be done on earth" will have been prayed in vain.

Lexophiles

Lexophile is a word used to describe those that have a love for words, such as "you can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish", or "to write with a broken pencil is pointless." A competition to see who can come up with the best lexophiles is held every year in an undisclosed location.

This year's winning submission is posted at the very end.

... When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate

... A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months. 

... When the smog lifts in Los Angeles U.C.L.A. 

... The batteries were given out free of charge.

... A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail 

... A will is a dead giveaway.

... With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress. 

... A boiled egg is hard to beat.

... When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall. 

... Police were summoned to a daycare center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest. 

... Did you hear about the fellow whose entire left side was cut off?  He's all right now. 

... A bicycle can't stand alone; it's just two tired.

... When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds. 

... The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine is now fully recovered. 

... He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

... When she saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she'd dye. 

... Acupuncture is a jab well done. That's the point of it.

And the cream of the twisted crop:

 .. Those who get too big for their pants will be totally exposed in the end

          So how clever and original are you?  Why not add your entry in the comment section.