This is a picture of the Rose of Sharon shrub next to my driveway.  The flowers are beautiful.  They require little or no care, and attract Hummingbirds in large numbers.

I’m going to make a confession.  I cut one down just like it.  I did it before I realized what I had.  When we bought the house almost twenty years ago, I was determined to put my “clear the decks” personality on the property.  But, in doing so I eliminated a thing of joy and great beauty.

How many times do we do that in our lives?  We rush through life like a Jackrabbit.  We ignore things God has given us to cherish and nurture.  We ignore others to whom we have been given the responsibility to share our lives.  But we pass it all by because we just don’t slow down long enough to understand.

The book of Ecclesiastes holds a sobering reminder of our foolishness.  Chapter 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

You see, Solomon had tried it all and it didn’t satisfy.  The reality is this:  if you go through life grabbing for all you can and ignoring God’s gifts, you won’t necessarily come up empty handed but you’ll come up empty hearted.

The most important thing is to make sure we don’t rush by He who is the true Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star, the Alpha, the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

Our pastor challenged us recently to read through the Book of Matthew and share the lessons we learned.  I started the same way I did for many years when I was teaching Sunday school, I prepared the introduction.  I was studying the period from the time of Jeremiah and Malachi until the birth of Christ.  J. Vernon McGee once said, “Station G O D went off the air for four hundred years.”  Most people mistakenly think that God took His ball and went home for four centuries.  But when we view the historical occurrences, they can only be explained by the hand of God.

While I was turning these things over in my mind, an unusual analogy came to me.

When I was a route man for the Coca Cola Company from 1972-1979, I had a friend at work named Butch.  He and I would attend almost every Vanderbilt home basketball game.  If we couldn’t get our hands on free tickets, we’d simply sneak into the game with the company employees on duty for the game.  Sales uniforms did have advantages.

In the mid-seventies Vanderbilt had a great series of teams led by three young men referred to as the F-Troop.  At the same time, Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King were turning the conference into a circus at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  Butch and I, through luck and shenanigans, had accomplished the impossible.  We had acquired a pair of premium floor level tickets for the Vandy-UT game at Memorial Gym in Nashville.  The lead story in the sports page of The Tennessean stated simply, “The Ernie and Bernie Show rolls into town tonight.  The atmosphere was electric.

The morning of the game I was in the morning sales meeting, when Butch eased into the back of the room, late as usual.  He slipped in beside me, elbowed me in the ribs and whispered, “The stage is set.”

It is the strangest thing, when I was studying the introduction to The New Testament, it struck me.  I hadn’t thought of that incident for years, but that is exactly what God did for Zechariah, Joseph and Mary.  He nudged them with the breath of an angel and said, for all eternity, “The stage is set.”

My yard is a weed patch.  It wasn’t always this way.  After the severe drought of two years ago, everyone told me to fertilize and re-seed.  My response still reverberates in my own hollow head: “Ahh, it will grow back.”

It grew back, alright.  But this time it was full of weeds.  What happened?  The truth of the matter is lawn grasses require care.  Weeds simply come from the four winds.  They grow with no trouble at all.  They require no maintenance.

Our spiritual lives are that way, aren’t they?  We go through times of drought when we are wrung out by the circumstances of life.  If we are listening for the voice of God, if we are focused on His Word, if we are spending time with Him, these can be times of great victory in our lives.  But, if we trust these times to just work out, the Adversary will sow weeds into our lives and they will flourish.  When they do, only the Weed & Feed of God’s grace will remove them.

I should have known better.  You see, I’ve been through those times of drought in my life.  I knew how important it was and is to be on guard, to include the proper disciplines.

Now, there has to be a bag of Weed & Feed around here somewhere.  If not, there’s always Lowes.

I work for a distributor of petroleum products.  In reality, I’m a glorified dispatcher.  A few days ago, one of my drivers, James, came to me and said, “Let me tell you a funny story.”  He said, “Yesterday I was getting ready to get in my pickup to go home when I noticed Calvin sitting next to his car, on the pavement, legs crossed Indian style and his head hung low.  I asked him if he was alright.  His only response was, ‘I give up.  Nothing has gone right today.  I give up.’  As it turns out, he’d mistakenly locked his keys in his car.  I told him if he’d give me about three minutes, I’d have it unlocked.  It didn’t take but two.” 

 

You see, unbeknown to Calvin, James was a master at unlocking the locked car.  It is a funny story, but is indicative of a profound truth.  Come, journey back with me two thousand years.

 

The disciples of Jesus had walked with Him for three years.  During that time, He had tried, many times, to teach the formula for spiritual success: surrender.

 

The night Jesus was arrested they all either ran or denied Him.  Often we look at them, as if to say, what a bunch of failures.  The truth is Jesus had them exactly where He wanted them.  It is the same place He has to bring each one of us.  He can’t really teach us and use us until we give up.  We have to give up our initiatives and pre-conceived ideas.  They had them and so do we. 

 

Calvin had to give up and let a “master” car thief teach him something.  We have to give up and simply follow the Master.

 

It was cold on Tuesday.  My wife came home with a startling confession.  She admitted, “Today I heard the first person, outside of your family, talk about Cotton Britches Winter.”  Now, that always takes me back to my childhood.  My grandmother not only recognized Cotton Britches Winter, but adhered to a strict observance of four other “winters”, as well.

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Southern tradition of naming the spring “cold snaps”, here is my grandmother’s list.  In her mind, it was not open to debate.

 

The first cold snap or winter was Redbud Winter.  It was followed, usually closely, by Dogwood Winter.  The following is the only area that was subject to interpretation:  Blackberry Winter and Locust Winter were often alternated in order, depending upon which one she saw blooming first.

 

That brings us to Cotton Britches Winter.    It was always the last chilly weather before warm weather stayed for a few months.  Her explanation of the name was priceless.  I can close my eyes and see her with a twinkle in her eye as she says, “When this little cold spell is over, you can put on your cotton britches because winter is over.”

 

I can’t wait for Cotton Britches Time.  How about you?

 

It’s almost Easter.  Let me ask you a question.  Have you ever had to be slapped between the eyes with something before you understood what you should have seen all along?  The Apostle Peter had an experience just like that, and his life was never the same.  We read right by it, if we are not careful.

 

In the twenty second chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Peter has denied Jesus three times, just like The Lord told him he would.  The rooster crows and Peter remembers the words Jesus had told him.  Then, it simply says, Peter went out and wept bitterly. 

 

Was it just the memory of Jesus’ words?  I don’t think so.  You see, I believe as much as I believe anything, Peter saw three things in this glance from The Lord, three things that penetrated to the marrow of Peter’s soul, three things that are the very nature of Christ Himself.

 

“Peter, I love you.”

 

“Peter, I forgive you.”

 

“Peter, I’m doing this for you.”

 

Oh, how The Adversary tries to get us to complicate the message.  But, when we lock eyes with Jesus, the message we need to share is clear.  Jesus loves you, Jesus will forgive you, and Jesus did this for you. 

Arnold was a tough guy.  He kept his distance.  He’d been in countless fights and encounters with motorized vehicles.  He carried the scars on a face only a mother could love.  In a way, he protected our house.  Arnold was a cat.

 

Saturday night, the same “tough streets” he had patrolled for years, took his life.

 

I learned a lot from Arnold.  I learned life isn’t always fair.  I learned much of our character is revealed by never giving up.  But, far more importantly, he taught me the most powerful thing we will ever do is to show concern for someone else.

 

Now, before you think I’ve lost my mind (learning life’s lessons from a cat) there is something you need to understand.  The first time I saw Arnold, I didn’t like him very much, but I did admire his swagger.  Arnold didn’t walk like an alley cat, he walked like a lion. 

 

As time passed by, I began to talk to him.  After awhile, he graduated to coming close enough to eat from the food we always keep out for the community cats.  Then, just the other day, a miracle occurred.  Arnold came to me and let me rub his back.

 

I don’t know whether you like cats or not, but the lesson this teaches us needs to burn deep into our hearts and souls.  Somebody has to take the first step!  If you want to be what God wants you to be, that somebody better be you.  If not, you’ll waste away in the hinterlands of self-servitude, wondering why you’ve never influenced a single soul.

 

Just a cat?  Maybe.  Or maybe it’s one of those times when God has to reach deep inside of us and find a new way to teach us a few things.

 

Thanks, Arnold.  We’re all going to miss you.

What does your study nook look like?  Is it filled with trendy best sellers by the latest authors?  Or are you an old “stick-in-the-mud” like me?

 

As you can see, mine is filled with resources published from the 1700’s right up till now.  Yet, these are only tools.

 

Our pastor recently asked us to read ahead and study a particular scripture for the next series.  As I did, I was reminded of a truth that is so easy to forget.  God has given us many gifted, intellectual, perceptive and intuitive people.  Their works can be a great help to our studies.  But when all is said and done, the truth is very evident; God has given us but one textbook, His Word.   It is simple enough for a child, yet deep enough to challenge the greatest theologians.

 

So, is it the main source in your study nook?  I have to constantly remind myself how important it is to lay the works of man down beside it to see how they stack up.  If I don’t, I find myself constantly blown about by opinions and conjecture.

 

How about you?

My granddaughter is about to turn two.  This morning I pulled out the old VHS tape of her mother’s second birthday party.  I laughed.  I was shocked at how much of my hair has turned gray and turned loose.  Also, I cried like a baby.  You see, that video contained a few brief moments with my mother and sister.  I officiated at both of their funerals.

 

Now, I wasn’t just crying from nostalgia.  I was crying from a convicted heart.  I was reminded how much I’ve kept The Gift of God to myself.

 

My mom was in the hospital, in her last few hours, before I ever shared with her how much Jesus means to me.  I guess I thought she should have seen it in all my endless “religious” activities.  It doesn’t work that way.  In God’s economy gifts are always to be shared, not hoarded and held, not pushed away under the false assumption that a “picture’s worth a thousand words.”

 

So, with whom are you failing to share The Gift?  It is possible to wait too long. 

What’s the worst thing we can do to someone, especially someone we care about?

 

I had a recent overnight stay in the hospital.  It was for a routine surgical procedure.  Now that I think about it, I’ve never understood the difference between major, minor and routine when it comes to surgery.  If it is performed on me, it’s major.

 

But…….to make a long story short, my stay was extended into the late afternoon due to some complications.  It was while I was waiting to be discharged, due to patient load and staffing, they decided to close the floor I was on.  Perfectly good business sense, but the problem was they didn’t tell me.  It was like they had forgotten me.  The halls were quiet, almost deserted.  It was not a good feeling.  Thank goodness for the call button.

 

Here is my question.  Who are you forgetting in your life?  I’ll guarantee you to them it is a miserable feeling.  I’ve been working on a list and I’m ashamed to say, that list is long, heartbreaking and soul-convicting.  I find myself over and over again saying, ouch.  Aren’t you glad God still issues wakeup calls?