No More 'No Mores"

Some folks call them covered dish luncheons. Others call them potlucks. It doesn’t matter what you call them, we’ve all been there and partook. Some folks are good cooks, others less so (I’ve seen at least a dozen ways to ruin okra. Picking it is right up near the top of the list). But we learn whose dishes to keep an eye on, and which to watch out for. As we work our way up the table, we keep hoping there’s something left in that one dish. Have you ever reached that spot only to find that there’s…NO MORE!?

Have you ever stood in line for tickets to a fabulous concert or program, only to reach the ticket window to find out there’s…NO MORE!?

Have you ever gone to a concert, or fireworks display that you wish would last forever, and suddenly, there’s…NO MORE!?

Why do wonderful things always seem to be in short supply? Good food, fellowship, enjoyable times – there’s either not enough, or that which there is doesn’t last long enough. Well, I’ve got good news. There is a time and place up ahead that I will refer to as the land of “No more No Mores”. That which is good for us, that which is needful, will be in abundance. Talk about music concerts. Talk about glorious displays in the sky. Talk about potlucks. Man, the Lord’s going to lay out a spread that you and I can’t begin to imagine. No more no mores.

In Revelation 21 and 22, John mentions some other “No Mores”. Perhaps you’ve read of some of them: no more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears, no more death, no more night, no more sickness, no more sin, no more abominations, no more curse.

Is it too far a fetch of the imagination to think that maybe, in that wonderful place called heaven, after the passage of some time, we will no longer remember the trials we’ve been through, the rough spots Satan has dragged us through? I like to think that even with what we’ve experienced on this earth, there’ll come a time when there’ll be no more “no mores.” We’ll remember what going against God’s will has caused – there’ll still be nail prints in those hands – but we won’t be able to recall the specifics of sin. Just maybe, the no mores will be, No More.

This old world is growing weary; it’s a tiresome place to live. It holds no fascination for me, No More, No More. Heaven’s looking better and better every day.

Have a great summer!

DR. G

You Can't Go Home

You can’t go home. I’m sure you’ve all heard that saying before. But time and again we hear of people going back, trying to rejoin a time and place that has moved on. Can’t be done. I’ve tried.

I first attended school in a little town called Belgrade, in the state of Montana. We moved there shortly after my fourth birthday, and left shortly before my eighth. I can still picture our house, the neighborhood, the large open field stretching from the end of our street, continuing over to the old Northern Pacific mainline tracks perhaps a quarter of a mile away. On the other side was the main street, most of the houses and our school.

About 15 years after leaving Belgrade, my wife and I passed through the town. I took her out to the house I remembered so well. It was smaller now. It was also somewhat derelict. The names on the mailboxes next door were not what I remembered. Home wasn’t there anymore.

A couple of years after graduating from high school, I stopped by my former school during class hours. I found the choir room, wanting to visit my former choir director. He was there, but only briefly. Although he still directed the choir, he was also now teaching an accounting class. Fewer kids were signing up for singing groups. Two years later, he left teaching and went to work for a bank. Can’t go back to the old school either. It’s not there anymore, at least not the school I remember. Bricks and roofing, yes, but the experience can’t be revisited.

When my kids were ten or twelve, I drove them through the old neighborhood I'd lived in during my highschool years. The lot where I found the rubber boa I described a few weeks ago now had a house. The house I’d lived in needed paint. I took my son and daughter along the route I would have followed when I walked to school. The two-lane main street of Burien had given way to four lanes. Buildings had gone, buildings had come. It certainly wasn’t home anymore.

Prior to coming to DPS, I had spent six years as registrar at my college alma mater. The old administration building was the same, but offices had been rearranged and the folks in them were different. The whole valley was different. Even the climate had changed. When I was in school, most of the valley was given over to dry-land farming of wheat and peas. Now, with the addition of dams on the Snake River, much of the valley is under irrigation. The evaporation of water from the irrigated fields has greatly increased the humidity in the valley. Now, heavy long-lasting fogs are not uncommon in the winters where once there had been desert. It’s just not the same as I remember it being. It wasn’t “home”.

A few months ago, I was moved from one school to another. Now, I’ve been given the opportunity to return to the former school. I accepted the offer, but I’m not really going home. Some of my friends are retiring at the end of this year. My former principal has just accepted a position with the central office. My fifth-grade kids will have moved on. I can’t even go home less than a year after leaving.

We are destined to continue progressing through our experiences here, knowing that we can never go back to where we’ve been. No point in being homesick. The home you or I might be homesick for no longer exists. All of our longing really should point forward. There is one home, one we’ve never been to, yet, that deserves our longing, our attention. No, we can’t go back, but we can go forward.

Christ has promised us each a home, far greater, more joyous – filled with more love, filled with all the good things memories are made of. Yes, we must forget about looking back at what was never as good as our minds have made us think it was. Instead, we must look upward and onward, toward that which our minds can’t even begin to comprehend. Aren’t you just a little homesick for heaven? I am.

Dr. G

Can You See Anything?

The second teaching jobs that my wife and I had were at a private school in Oshawa, Ontario, about 20 miles east of Toronto. The school encouraged students to be involved in reach-out teams which would visit smaller, outlying churches and provide music and other programs on weekends. So it was, during the winter of 1976, that we found ourselves with three young ladies headed to a church in Sudbury, Ontario, a distance of about 250 miles.

Most winter weather in Ontario comes from the west and northwest. As a result, it is often cold, but snowfall typically is not too great, since the larger bodies of water (the Great Lakes) are either far away to the west or just to the south. So there usually isn’t much lake-effect snow. However, the road going to Sudbury is just inland from the shore of Georgian Bay, a large eastern-projecting section of Lake Huron. As a consequence, lake-effect snow is very common there.

It was cold, but mostly clear when we left Oshawa Friday afternoon. By the time we reached Barrie, it had clouded up and a light snow was falling. It was also dark (sunset comes quite early that far north in the winter). The road was snow covered, but driving was not difficult. When we reached a section of road north of Parry Sound, however, things changed. A full-blown white-out covered the area as snow blew in off the lake.

I had never driven to Sudbury, so didn’t have a clue what the road was like, nor did I have any idea of where we were or what the surroundings were like. But I kept creeping forward slowly, trying to keep to the right of the piled-up snow at the edge of the road. After a short distance, I became aware of some taillights ahead of me. I worked my way up behind them, only to discover that I was following one of the big snowplows that worked the roads up there.

White-outs are not fun. It is comforting when you’re not the only vehicle on the road. I decided to stay close enough behind that I could still track him, but far enough back that I could stop in time should he put on his brakes. His taillights were the only point of contact we had to anything outside the car for over twenty miles. We kept wondering, "How does he know where he’s going?" He must have had that road memorized. Eventually, the snow abated. He pulled off, and we continued on, now able to see.

There have been times when I’ve been in a spiritual white-out. Satan surrounds us with so much downward pulling noise, so many distractions, disappointments, frustrations; he’ll use anything that shields our eyes from the narrow road the Lord has outlined for us.

It really wasn’t wise of me to continue driving when I first hit the white-out. I was totally without a point of reference; the road had a number of turns and pitfalls. It would have been so easy to lose my way, and bring tragedy not only to myself but the other four in the car. The snowplow was heaven-sent, a reliable guide that had the road memorized.

When I find myself getting overwhelmed by the snowstorms Satan sends my way, it is imperative that I pull over, wait for the Holy Spirit to come along and then follow Him explicitly. He knows the way. Imagine how silly it would have been for me to pull out and try to pass the snowplow, or to turn off onto another road, wanting to try another route. Behind God’s snowplow is the only way to travel through the winter of Satan’s discontent.

Can one of you find that window scraper under your feet back there?

Dr. G

Snake Handlin' II

I had been away at college less than a month. To say I was unaware as to how things worked at an institution with dormitories, deans, schools, and respected administrators would be to suggest that I was somewhat naïve, perhaps a little gullible, certainly trusting. It would also be true. I had grown up in a home where you did the right thing because it was the right thing to do; I tried to believe my friends were of the same mold (more or less).

I had gone for a walk with several of those friends after lunch on a Saturday afternoon in late September. The school was in a small rural town, and only blocks off campus the landscape turned into pastures, wheat fields, and streams bordered by cottonwoods and willows. That is where we headed. We’d barely reached the wheat fields and were passing through a road cut on one of the rolling hills when I looked up and saw something sticking out of an exposed gopher hole about a foot below the field level. It was a snake’s head. A good-sized snake head.
I asked my friends to stay in the road and keep an eye on the snake while I backtracked, went up into the field, intending to arrive just above the snake. What I wanted to do was to reach down over the cut edge and grab the snake just behind its head. It worked like a charm. I ended up pulling a western bull snake that was a well over four feet long (these constrictors grow up to eight feet long, and are among the largest of snakes in North America) out of that hole.

Of course my friends thought I was crazy, but neither of them had a biological bent to their thinking. They continued on their walk. I headed back to my dorm room, which I shared with one of the resident counselors. He wasn’t in at the time. So I was free to locate a box in which to store my treasure (for what, I didn’t know). Unlike the rubber boa I wrote about a few weeks back, a bull snake (also known as a gopher snake) can and will strike in self-defense. While not poisonous and lacking fangs, the teeth can cause a bloody wound. Somehow I got it into the box safely and piled all of my books on top to keep it there. I had no idea what I was going to do with it next.

After supper, one of the guys who had gone walking with me stopped by the room. He was a little surprised that I still had the snake. He suggested that he was acquainted with a girl who “probably” would like to see it. Trusting him, I opened the box and deftly grabbed the snake, which coiled itself around my forearm and part way up my upper arm; I was off to town, snake in tow.

What I didn’t know was that this girl (Shirley) was working the reception desk at the women’s dormitory. I had the sense to stop at the top of the entry steps, and didn’t go in. My friend went inside to get her. Believe it or not, she did come out and showed genuine interest in the snake. I relaxed a bit. Then she suggested that the Women’s Dean might like to see it. She went back inside, only to appear a moment later to say that the Dean was in her office and I could go in to see her. What I didn’t know was that Shirley had only told the Dean “there was a young man outside with something he wants to show you.”

I went where few men have trod: into the office of the Dean of Women with a four-foot plus bull snake. To make matters worse, the school President had been having a conversation with her and was sitting in a chair in front of her desk. I can remember clearly to this day the resulting responses. Before I had two words out of my mouth, the president was behind the Dean’s chair, and she was coming around the desk toward me. She was even more interested than Shirley had been. We remained on good terms for decades.

With her permission, I sat on a small couch in the lobby of the dorm for about a half hour. Many people (mostly female) passed by; only a few even saw the snake. Those that did kept going, albeit a little faster than when they had approached.

Over the years, I’ve pondered the several responses I saw that night. A fully-grown man had fled as far away as he could and still keep his dignity. The Dean responded with great interest, even to the point of stroking the snake’s head and noting the colored patterns in the scales. Others saw the snake, knew what it was, and wanted nothing to do with it. Most were unaware of its presence.

In many ways, people of this world respond to Satan in much the same manner. Some are drawn to and charmed by him. Others sense his presence and flee for safer ground. Unfortunately, more and more people are ignorant of his presence, maybe even of his existence. Bull snakes are harmless. Being ignorant of them is of no consequence. Satan is as dangerous when we are not aware of his presence as when we are, perhaps even more so.

It’s my prayer that we’ll all be able to keep our spiritual eyes open during our spiritual journey through life. He could be lurking in that tall grass right over there!

Dr. G