Revenge of the Fire Ants

Joseph made the Israelites promise to take his bones for burial in the Promised Land. It took 430 years, but his descendants finally made it happen.

I spent years destroying fire ant mounds in Fort Worth, Texas, and apparently they passed word along for generations to come get me. It took about 30 years. They caught up with me last week.

For those blessed with ignorance of fire ants, please enjoy your bliss. But they are aggressive, prolific, and angry. They are especially angry when you disturb their mounds, even accidentally. The first time I encountered a fire ant, I was delivering the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper along my paper route. I was walking through the grass of an apartment complex when a bagged newspaper slipped out of my hand. I picked it up from the turf, and moments later, I felt a searing pain on the back of my hand.

Ouch! It felt like fire! In just a moment I realized that I had been bitten by a fire ant. I learned to look for ants, and avoid them like I never needed to in NC.

A few months later I got a new job working for the landscaping crew at my graduate school. This put me in close, regular contact with those evil creatures. My job was mowing grass...not putting out insecticide. So I had to learn real well how to spot the signs of fire ants. When I was promoted from push mowers to riding mowers, I learned to take great delight in scalping those ant hives. I would go out of my way to scatter their six-legged bodies far and wide. I don't think I ever suffered a bite while rolling along in my 60 inch swath.

Now understand, fire ants live in the hot, dry sandy parts of North America, like Texas and along the Southeast coast. They have been migrating ever so persistently toward colder, less sandy realms.

Then last week. Last week came after last winter. Remember that cold winter that would never let go? Remember the first 7 days of 2018? It never got above freezing. I walked repeatedly across my farm pond. I felled trees on that frozen reservoir.

If ever cold weather would halt the march of the fire ant, this winter had to set them back. But they found me. Innocently I pushed my mower through the lush, front yard turf. I noticed some ant hills, of course as I casually paced along. Then I had this pain up near my knee. Ooh, what was that? Then another, another, another. Nearly a dozen of those sensations made me wonder if I was having some sort of neurological episode. I saw no creatures, and at first saw no evidence of bites.

It never occurred to me that I was fire ant lunch. We don't have fire ants in Rockingham Co. I had heard rumors of them in neighboring counties, but not this far north. When the welts showed up, I came to the sobering realization. They had found me. After all thee years they found their revenge.

From now on, I will have to watch my own yard for those hateful insects. I'm getting some Spectricide. Game on.

Consumerism and Capitalism

We live in a consumer-driven society. So much of life is driven by commerce. We are constantly buying or selling. The inescapable barrage of ads reminds us that life here is about making purchases. You can't even pump gas anymore without hearing some product pitch.

As soon as a new means of communication is created, someone harnesses it for advertising. We need people to consume, so that we can sell. We need people to consume so that we can earn a living. Consuming makes our world work.

Some products are necessary, like food and clothing. Some products aren't necessary, but potentially desirable for something other than survival. Those who produce unnecessary products have to create demand for those products. Go see this movie. Buy this car. Eat at this restaurant. Ask your doctor if [some drug] is right for you. The trick is to make you think you really need this product. We know that advertising works, because sellers keep advertising.

This consumer culture seems to be a necessary byproduct of capitalism. One makes a living by producing and selling a product or service. We receive pay for our work. We may provide a service to an employer, or we may sell our product directly to consumers. Our income depends on others spending money. And the better our products are marketed, the more we sell, and the more income we receive.

In a free market, we can sell our products or services to anyone who agrees to pay for them. And so a free market becomes driven by the art of persuading people to buy.

I like capitalism, for the most part, but I find consumerism repulsive. That's hard for me to reconcile.

Dread

Attitude is everything.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life, Proverbs 4:23.

The enemy wants to hijack my heart, making me expect and anticipate bad things. This world is evil, but the devil wants me to believe that I face this evil world alone and unprotected. Somehow, I fall for this trick over and over.

Jesus has promised us that he is with us always, even to the end of the age. Paul tells Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of self-discipline.

It is up to me, with the help of God, to guard my heart, my attitude. When I believe that God has good things for me, even today, I trust him even when the going gets hard.

No trouble has ever come on me that God has not redeemed, either in the short run or the long run. I can trust him with my schedule, my conversations, my safety, my future. I'm not an orphan. I have a Father, and he walks with me through all the shadows of death.

Good Friday Brokenness

We call it "good," but that term never quite captures the spirit of the day. I can think of plenty of other names for it:
Sad Friday

Somber Friday
Justice Friday
Mercy Friday
Grace Friday
Holy Friday
Costly Friday
Atonement Friday
Agony Friday

But somehow the Church decided that this is Good Friday. On this day, I always feel like I should have done more to prepare for Easter. The occasion leaves me feeling like I have not done enough.

Clearly I am missing the point. Good Friday is the day when Jesus did it all. I will never do enough. Of course I am unworthy, sinful, needy, lacking.

For me, for us, Jesus willingly died on the cross and paid for our sin.

My responsibility is not to prove myself worthy of his sacrifice, but to receive the gift of his sacrifice.

I feel as though I need it now more than ever.

Weather or Not

It's snowing. Again. Sometimes here in NC we get enough snow to get tired of it, but never get enough to shrug it off. So, when snow comes, we hunker down. Only the brave souls with 4WD take their vehicles out...like I did today. I had to get a haircut, which surely qualifies as genuine, necessary travel.

All winter the 6:30 news has covered storm after storm, shutting down highways and airports. It is news because, well, we should not have to stop our plans for something as primitive as weather. After all, surely we have more than conquered nature, so that we can plan our lives without weather interruptions.

That seems to be our attitude today. "OMG, the weather was so bad that it changed our plans!" This must be a very new attitude for humanity, the belief that weather is a non-factor in most daily routines. I mean, we have to have everything planned out, don't we? And usually we can work around weather contingencies. Who plans an outdoor wedding without a Plan B?

But we have built an illusion that we have conquered weather for all intents and purposes. Only the most extreme meteorological event could impinge on us. And so we can be the masters of our supply chains and board meetings. We can plan out our lives and strategies without seriously believing that anything is outside our control.

But James reminds us,  Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. (James 4:13-14)

When everything depends on us, we can control everything. Before we conquered nature so thoroughly, we had a little more humility. People actually let the weather dictate their schedules. Fishermen and farmers still do. Maybe we could learn a little from them.

It's still snowing.

Something is Wrong

We all knew it was coming. We knew there would be another shooting. At a school. Or a church. Or a concert. Or a nightclub. Or a post office. It was just a matter of time.

Sure, we are shocked. But are we surprised? This is just the world we live in. And the country we live in. What shocked me most was the number of school shootings this year. The year is barely six weeks old, and there have been eight school shootings resulting in death or injury in 2018. Eight.

Here we go again with the politics. We need more gun laws. We need better law enforcement. we need metal detectors…everywhere. We need more vigilance to catch unstable people. We need counselors to help troubled youth and troubled adults. We need to spend money on…something. But this is just the surface of the problem. There is something deeper.

Something is wrong.

Has there ever been a society in which innocent people were routinely targeted by member of that society? What leads people to be so depressed, angry, lonely, rejected, despondent, frustrated that they plot and carry out mass murder?

Something is wrong with the soul.

Too many people fail to see the value of human beings—others and themselves. Too many people have no hope. The mass shootings are only one example of the flagging American soul. The #MeToo movement reaches back decades with disturbing stories of abuse. Men have been objectifying and mistreating women for more than a generation. The rabid support for abortion in some circles stuns me. Laws must allow women to choose whether or not their fetus is a baby. It will have rights if I say it does.

Our society has been heading down this path for quite some time. It is not a problem of laws or politics or funding. 

Something is wrong with the soul of America.

Somehow we have strayed from the belief that “all men are created equal.” Along the way we have forgotten that “all men” includes Native Americans and Africans. It also includes all of mankind, not just the males. We have also forgotten that these equally created persons are all “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

In other words, we have forgotten that people matter. We so personalize our own rights that we forget the value of others. Our selfishness becomes magnified when we find likeminded people and stop listening to dissenting points of view. People who disagree with us are just stupid. Maybe they don’t deserve to live. The world would be better off without them. We can “otherize” people very effectively. Ask any hate group. 

The soul of America needs compassion, hope, forgiveness, love, justice, redemption. Our country needs the Good News.

God help us.

Stop me, Coach!

We forget to stop. Sometimes we choose not to stop. We know we should, but maybe we are addicted to action.

That's why we are doing a series called "Stop." Stopping is a lost art these days. How can you take a break? It seems like we only stop for a day or two when we have a good snow.

We were actually designed to take regular breaks. God made us that way. He even gives us one day out of seven to let go and remember that he's in charge. No one can live without rest. Life has natural rhythms. We function better when we work with those patterns.

Jesus tells us that we can know his rest. He even promises to rest us, if we will come to him. (Matthew 11:28) Think of a basketball or soccer coach. Why does he pull players out of the game and sit them on the bench?

• For an attitude adjustment
  
• For strategy instruction
• To deal with an injury
• To rest and prepare for a big moment
• To remind the player to listen to the coach
• To remind the player to be a team player
• To give another player time to lead

God rests us for all the same reasons. But we choose to ignore that call to rest. And we become worn out, cynical, discouraged, selfish, preoccupied, dull. The world cannot possibly go on without us. We don't need to rest. We like to be busy. Rest won't work with our schedule. Rest really isn't necessary.

But is life without a break really life? Life with no rest fills us with all the shallow things. It leaves us wanting more value, more meaning, more depth. We only get that when we take a step back.

Wouldn't life be great if you knew that you were never more than 6 days away from laying down every burden? That cadence of rest gives you the drive and the depth you need for real living.

And what is life without real living?

Let's Stop. Join us for the last two messages in this series.
January 28: Stop and Receive
February 4: Stop and Give