Extra Hot

 

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.  It was also eighty degrees, and someone was wearing his winter coat on the beach.  Something clearly wasn’t right.

“Why do you still have on your coat?”  I asked my younger son.

“I’m just trying to enjoy the beach,” he said.  “I’d enjoy it a lot more if random people stopped asking me about my coat.”

“It just seemed a little warm for a coat,” I said.  “We could have it surgically removed if that would be helpful.”

“It wouldn’t be helpful,” Elliot said.  “I’m not hot all and it’s a nice coat.”

“Maybe we need to get him checked to see if he has a thyroid condition,” Elaine put in.  “He does seem to be cold all of the time.”

I looked around but couldn’t spy a minute-clinic site to get blood drawn anywhere on this particular stretch of sand.  “Maybe we can wait till we get back home,” I said.  “Although I’m guessing his thyroid level is OK.  I think he decided to wear his coat and so taking it off would be admitting he made a mistake.  It’s better to bake than to admit error.”

It is hard to live life unable to make mistakes.  Of course, no one can actually live a completely mistake-free existence, but some people act as they do.  They seldom admit to any errors on their part – people around them are to blame for misunderstandings.  It might even turn out that though others thought that a mistake was made, there really wasn’t one.

“For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again…” (Proverbs 24:16a) When the righteous man makes mistakes, he gets up, dusts himself off, and confesses his failure, learning from them to do better. 

On the other hand, it is those who never make mistakes who repeat them most.

Murder He Wrote

 

“Dad,” Elliot asked me the other evening.  “If someone was shot through the neck, could you tell what gun had shot them just from the size of the bullet hole if you didn’t have the bullet?”

“Probably not,” I said.  “Although depending on how close to their neck the gun was held, there would certainly be blood and DNA on the gun.”

“Sure,” Elliot agreed, “but they didn’t know about DNA in the 1920s in England.”

“This is a weird conversation,” I said.  “Why are you wanting to know all this stuff?  Are you time traveling back to try to murder someone because murder is murder, even if a time machine is involved.”

“I’m writing a detective story,” Elliot said.  “It is set in the 1920s in England and it involves the detective’s cousin being shot in the neck and the detective coming to solve the crime.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.  “I thought you were supposed to write about things that you know about.  You don’t know anything about England, particularly not during the 1920s – nor much about murders, for that matter.  Why not set your story in a small Mennonite school in the 2020s?”

(Even as I said this, I realized it wasn’t totally true.  An awful lot of authors write stories about dragons and magic and not a single one of them that I have found owns a pet dragon or can do magic beyond using an iPhone.)

“That would be boring,” my younger son replied.  “Beyond which, I’ve read enough Agatha Christie stories that I think I know how to write this sort of thing.  My only problem is that my chapters are too short – most of them are only a page and a half long, but I figure after I do my research, I can expand them.”

“Well, I’ll enjoy telling people that I knew Elliot Waldron, back before he was a famous crime novelist,” I said.

“It’s amazing to me that I thought of this perfect crime.  I think it will surprise most people,” Elliot told me seriously.  “I figure I’ll have the book done by the end of the summer.”

“And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

If Solomon thought that there were a lot of books written in his day, I wonder what he would have thought about the 21^st century.  In doing a tiny bit of research, it seems as though (if you include self-published books) there are some 2 million new books written every year, just in the United States.

That means that there are more people writing books than are actually reading them!

I have read enough of these books to know that many of them have no particular reason for their existence.  I suppose it takes some level of self-importance to believe that you have an important story tell or light to shed on some subject that has been shrouded in mystery until the present.

I suppose more important than the writing of numerous books is the reading of THE book – God’s message to humans.  More than that, the goal in reading Scripture is not simply to read or even memorize the words, but to apply them to our lives.

An awful lot of people who claim to follow Christ stalk through their lives, hurting their friends and family with their words and actions. 

Too many of us believe that we have much to say and some of us even sit down and cobble together books or blogs as a result.  But only one book truly sheds light on the path we are to take.  All other books fall short – even a crime novel written by a 15-year-old about someone shot through the neck in England in the 1920s.

Jots and Tittles

 

 “Come on everyone,” Elaine called out from the kitchen, where she was finishing preparing our supper meal.  “It’s time to eat people!”

There was stunned silence.  “Really, Honey?”  I asked.  “Have we turned to cannibalism?  I know groceries are expensive, but still…”

“I thought this was chicken,” Aly said, looking at the dish sitting on the table.

“There’s a comma in there that you apparently didn’t catch,” Elaine said – I thought a bit defensively.  “It’s time to eat, People.  You hear it now?”

It reminded me of the old joke where a Panda walked into a restaurant and ordered a yogurt parfait.  Upon finishing his delectable repast, he pulled out a gun and fired two shots into the ceiling and left the eating establishment.

Another patron turned to the man beside him and asked, “Why did he do that?”

“Look in this book,” the other man said, showing him a wildlife manual.  Under the entry for Panda, was simply written this entry.  “Black and white mammal native to China.  Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Of course, commas make all of the difference in some sentences.  It can make the difference between understanding that a panda eats both bamboo shoots and leaves and believing that pandas are prone to firing off weapons and fleeing the scene of the crime afterward.

Jesus said, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18) This verse came in the context of the Sermon on the Mount – a section of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus repeatedly strengthened the commands given in the Law of Moses, rather than dispensing with them.

Jots and tittles are the King James’ way of translating yods and daleths – tiny little letters and strokes that help give meaning to ancient Hebrew writing.  The point seems to have been that only the parts of the law that Jesus fulfilled would be dispensed with – the rest would continue on.

Jesus went through talking about murder and telling his listeners that not only was murder wrong, but getting angry and holding offenses against your brother was dangerous.  Adultery was not simply the act of unfaithfulness in marriage, but included looking lustfully on someone else.

I am afraid that many people in the 21^st century believe that Jesus came to get rid of the law – commas and all, but the reality is He came to give us the power to live above the law.  He came to bring us the ability to live in holiness and to understand what it means to please God.

For whether we are talking about cannibalism, or just coming to the table to eat chicken, every part of the sentence is important.  How much more the inspired Word of God that was given to the Biblical authors – yods, daleths, commas, and all.

A Loving Epistle

 

“Dad, I want you to mail this letter to Tonya,” Elise told me, presenting me with an envelope with the name TONYA scrawled across the front.  A stamp had been placed beside the name.  “I put the stamp on so they would make sure to deliver the letter on time.”

“But you’ll see Tonya on Sunday,” I said.  “The letter would hardly get to her before you see her next.”

The letter wasn’t sealed and so I peaked at the note inside.  I felt like an Egyptologist trying to decode a laundry list from the corner of King Tut’s tomb.  Elise is not into spacing her words apart, nor does she use punctuation and sometimes she doesn’t use vowels. 

I read such sentences as: “Plsritsun.” (Please write soon?) and “Allriteweneverican,” (I’ll write whenever I can.) 

I was stumped for a while by the phrase, “Lukonbak.”  But eventually I discovered that it was merely an indication that Elise’s epistle continued on the other side of the paper.

“Dad, I won’t see Tonya for ever so long and she needs to know that I still love her,” Elise said.

“I think she’ll be OK,” I said.

“You know,” Elise told me wisely.  “You can love people, but you can’t love food.  You can only like food.  A lot of people don’t know that, and they’ll say things like ‘I love ice cream,” but you can’t really love ice cream at all.”

My six-year-old daughter may not write the most legible letters or understand the rules of punctuation, but she understands some things about love that are important.  Love is something deeper than the like you have for a particular object or food and more than that, the object of love needs to be told of that love regularly.

Many people say that they love God.  I wonder what they mean by that.  Do they love Him the same way they love ice cream or a special kind of pickles?  Do they mean that they love the fact that they can bring lists of wants and needs to Him to fulfill – like some sort of cosmic grandfather?

The Bible tells us that the best way to know if someone loves God is if they show love to the people around them.  “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?  And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.” (I John 4:20,21)

The two are tightly related.  Loving God and loving our brother and yet, so many people try to separate them, believing that they can love God without demonstrating any sort of love for the people they live and work with.

At the end of the day, it is more important to show love than to use spaces between words or even to capitalize words correctly.  

"ForonlythosewhoshowlovetootherstrulylovetheirHeavenlyFather."