SIXTEEN TONS

In the 1950's, singer Tennessee Ernie Ford popularized a song by Merle Travis titled, "Sixteen Tons." It was a coal miner's lament that no matter how hard he worked, he felt trapped and unable to change his situation.

Early coal miners worked long, hard hours deep in the earth under severely unhealthy conditions. They often lived in company owned houses and were paid in "scrip," coupons that could only be used at the company store. Their children grew up in squalor and seemed destined to work in the mines also. Hence, they felt trapped by their world of work.

The Company embodied the world's evil, and the miner felt possessed and unable to change his situation. Even if he were summoned to heaven, he couldn't go because the Company "owned" him. The final line in the chorus went, "St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go - I owe my soul to the Company Store."

Sin traps us all. No matter what we think we can do, we cannot remove the consequences of our sin. We can change, but we still need a Savior, One who can transcend the squalor of our sin and bring us cleansed to God. Jesus is that Savior.

People of all ages have struggled with feelings of hopelessness and bondage due to lack of finances, poor health and a bad relationship. Sometimes the bondage is imagined, but more often it is actual, such as when nations shackle certain peoples who do not fit their national needs.

Jews have struggled with bondage since the Egyptians enslaved them 3500 years ago. Since the time of the Romans, Christians have been enslaved and killed for their faith, and even today today many believers are "owned" by cultures who believe they should be removed or even destroyed.

God does not abandon His people when they become trapped. God told the enslaved people of Israel in Exodus 6:6, "I will rescue you from their bondage and will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments." We may feel trapped by a relationship, debt, or a hospital bed, but God is always there to rescue us.

God rescues His people in many ways, but the best way is through His Son Jesus Christ. St. Paul said, "While we were powerless to help ourselves, Christ died for sinners." (Romans 5:6 - Phillips) When life is at its lowest ebb, we are not without hope because we have God's grace by faith in Christ Jesus.

No one is hopeless whose hope is in God.

SHREK THE SHEEP

Shrek the New Zealand sheep was lost for six years. Its owner said it hated being shorn and was able to hide in caves on the ranch. But Shrek had a problem. It could not shed its wool. When found, Shrek had six years growth and looked like a huge dirty snowball with tiny feet and a barely visible nose. When shorn, its wool weighed sixty pounds, enough to make twenty suits. If it hadn't been found, its wool would just have kept growing and growing.

Unlike their wild cousins, domestic sheep have been bred not shed their coats so the wool can be used for clothing. It is doubtful domestic sheep can keep all their wool and live an normal life. Too much wool can cause overheating, and its weight causes mobility problems. If an unshorn sheep of many years falls down, it might not be able to get back up. A sheep's face can be covered with so much wool it can't see or even eat.

When shorn, Shrek was thin but weak. Its owner stated it died at the age of sixteen, a normal sheep life. But without its wool being removed regularly, it would have died sooner. The weight of wool can be deadly for a sheep. 

So also, the weight of sin can be deadly for us people. We often carry a load of sin that weighs us down. Sins of anger, resentment and regret, sins we have done and those we have left undone, all can combine to make life difficult. Without its removal, sin is truly deadly. The weight of unforgiven sin can crush us eternally.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father knew this, so He sent His only son Jesus to take our sins upon Himself. He went to the cross so that we might not be crushed by the weight of our sin. Jesus is truly our Savior, who has removed the weight of our sins. "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23) This is the message of the season of Lent.

Think what you'd feel like carrying an extra sixty pounds on your back, every day and every night, its weight only increasing and never becoming lighter. Even the strongest of people would be crushed under its weight. People need Jesus and need to trust in Him as their saving Lord. 

Give thanks to God you don't have to live under all that unnecessary weight like Shrek.

THE REAL MESSAGE

The national news this past week carried a story about a Bible that saved an Ohio man's life. Rickey Waggoner, an RTA bus driver, was fixing a mechanical problem outside his bus when three assailants approached and tried to kill him. It was likely a gang initiation.

Waggoner was shot twice in the chest at close range, but a contemporary version of the Bible he was carrying, The Message, absorbed the bullets that otherwise should have killed him. Upon hearing of this story in the Dayton Daily News, Eugene Peterson, age 81 and editor of The Message said, "That's wonderful. I've heard stories about something like that happening during the Second World War. I'm glad to be in the club."

"There was obviously some kind of intervention involved in this incident because Waggoner should probably not be alive," a Dayton Police Sergeant told a reporter at the scene. Waggoner told police that one of the assailants told another to kill him, "if you want to be all the way in the club."

Waggoner was shot once in the leg and twice in the chest, bullets which were stopped by his Bible. He was also stabbed, but was able to grab both the gun and knife as the teenage suspects fled. Waggoner then called police from inside his bus.

While this kind of protection by a Bible is quite unusual, protection by God's Word is not. God's Word always protects those who read and value it. Actually, it gives people real life. The Bible's words are timeless and real, because Jesus Himself is the Word of God in human form. He died to give salvation to all, even those who wanted to kill Him or His people.

We give thanks to God that Waggoner was saved by The Message, but we especially give thanks that Jesus Christ, the heart of The Message, has saved the millions of people all over the world by giving them faith through the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle John once wrote, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish." (John 1:14, The Message)

We pray those two young man will one day trust the real Message, Jesus.

HEAVENLY BINGO

One night a month during the winter season I am Bingo Caller in our Retirement Park. Each Monday night three hundred to four hundred people gather at tables in the Ball Room with hopes of winning money. Only a few win and I often guarantee people before the game they can double their money by folding it and putting it back in their pockets. It's an old joke but there's truth in it when it comes to games of chance.

Bingo is generally fun, and I have an idea why some folks like to play. It's because even though they lose, they still feel like winners. In every game players hear numbers they can mark off on their cards. Every time they mark a number, they feel like they've done something. They may not have won, but at least they got to mark off those numbers. 

We play twelve games each night, so there are twelve to fifteen or more winners because sometimes more than one person wins on the same card. Most of those who come feel satisfied that even if they don't win money, they still "won" their card numbers. Bingo is quite popular at our park.

There's excitement in the air when the jackpots are big and tension when the Caller makes a mistake. The Caller needs to remain calm when people grumble because they're there to have fun and they know only a few will win money. Whatever else happens, the game is over when the winner shouts "BINGO!" The one with a valid Bingo wins and the rest are satisfied they got most of the numbers.

It is tempting to think that getting to heaven is like that. If we get most of our actions right, we win the heavenly prize, right? If we do a majority of Christian deeds during our lives, God will award us the prize, right? 

Sorry. Only the winning scorecard gets the prize, and without Jesus there'd be no winners. No matter how good a life we live, or how close we come to winning, it takes Jesus to get us heaven. No "near-perfect" life will win it. Those "I only missed one" cards don't count.

Heaven requires a winning card with a perfect score, and only Jesus can get that for us. On Calvary He won the Big One, and He offers to share His eternal winnings with every man, woman and child who trust Him as Lord and Savior. When Jesus is our Savior by faith, we win the Big One also. One of His disciples, John, said in chapter 6, verse 47, "He who believes HAS eternal life." That's the plain truth.

When Judgement Day comes, all believers can shout, HEAVEN!

WONDERFULLY MADE

Last Friday someone in the park where we live tried to drive inside his neighbor's house. Good thing there was a brick flower planter or he would have done it. People driving by saw the bricks lying there and clucked their tongues that someone must have had too much to drink. The bricks are still there this morning. Until someone picks them up and repairs the wall, they will not move. The wall will not repair itself.

A man came up for communion at Sunday's service wearing a leg brace. It was protecting a broken ankle bone as a result of a missed step. The difference between the brick wall and the man's leg was that the leg was healing itself. The moment he broke his leg, millions of osteoblasts, those pot-hole repair cells began attaching themselves to the fracture site to make new bone.

Those cells hadn't been waiting around for that break. Billions of them had already been diligently replacing old bone cells so that when we were young our body's bone structures were replaced every year. Now only about 18 percent of an older person's bones are replaced every year. This is done by the osteoclasts, the demolition cells at work inside us to clean out the old cells so the osteoblasts can replace it with new ones. The older we get, the less willing our bodies are to let our bone (or other) cells get replaced.

If I tried to repair that broken brick wall by removing a line of bricks in a horizontal row, the rest of the wall would collapse. But if I replaced a brick here and there, always keeping the wall basically intact, I'd eventually have a new wall. That's how our body fixes itself, depositing new fiber here and there until the bone is fixed. The Blasts and the Clasts work together, without our permission or participation. We don't have to call them to start working. They just show up.

My point? Our body is no accident. There are hundreds of types of cells inside our bodies that do their work to grow us, repair us and keep us alive and healthy. Some say the Bible conflicts with science. But it is never more true when it says, we are "fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)

With so many advances in technology and science today, it's easy to dismiss the notion of a Creator God. We foolish people still think that, given enough time and trials, the body just sort of flops itself together in the right order so we can be born, grow and get healing when we are injured.

But our bodies are not an accident of nature. God put us together this way. To insist on believing our bodies all just "happen" takes far greater faith than to recognize that a Divine Creator is made us this way. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made is a fine little book by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancy. I recommend it.

Stay healthy, use your head and drive safely today!

WE PLAN, GOD LAUGHS

Someone has said, "Man makes his plans and God laughs." We don't always know how life is going to turn out, but God does. This is true of my friends, Darrell and Wanda. 

Wanda went to Florida after graduating from High School. She was planning to visit friends in a warmer place, but God had different plans. There she met Darrell, a Key West native, and soon they were married. He had his degree and had planned to teach Florida youth, but a decade later I met them in North Dakota where I instructed and baptized him and they became our friends and great helpers in my church.

Darrell had planned a career there as an insurance and investment counselor, but God had different plans. A decade later he attended seminary and was ordained in the Lutheran pastoral ministry.  He and Wanda assumed he'd be pastor of a church in the midwest, but God had different plans. Their first church was in the Bahamas! After that they ministered together to people with mental retardation and hearing loss, so Darrell learned to preach and teach in sign language. 

He took a call to a congregation, but again God had different plans. With his Caribbean background, Darrell spent more than a year with LCMS World Relief helping people in Haiti after their earthquake. He is now pastor in a west Texas town where there's a huge prison for Hispanic people due to be deported. There he has begun a highly successful Bible Class inside that prison. 

He wrote me last week of another incident how God changed their plans. They'd returned from a short cruise and planned to leave ship, but fog and cold weather kept them on board all day, requiring them to drive home at night by a more desolate road. Along the way they encountered a rollover accident involving a mother and four small children. In the freezing cold they stopped to help, prayed with them and called EMTs on their cell phone. 

Pastor Darrell and Wanda had planned a trip, but God had a better plan. If they had have driven their normal route home or at the normal time, they'd missed assisting the accident victims. Once again, he said, God put them at the time and place where they were needed. "Was this a coincidence?" he said. "Absolutely not!" 

Their personal life hasn't been easy. Darrell has endured a heart attack, personal struggles and now has vision problems that require Wanda to be his driver. They've always trusted the Lord for their needs, especially for his special ministries. Today he is trying to purchase Spanish Bible Class items and materials for Wanda to make the hundreds of Spanish Bible verse bookmarks they give each deportee as they leave the prison.

Darrell finished his letter, "The next time you are late for something or your plans are changed, remember that God is still in control. He knows what needs to be done and He protects His own. That precious family didn't know us or we them, but God put us together that night!"

Carol and I have decided to help Pastor Darrell and Wanda's prison ministry and we invite you to join us. We're sending our check to Trinity Lutheran Church, P.O. Box 245, Eden, TX 76837, with "Prison Ministry" written on the check memo line. 

Praise God for His good plans and His dedicated workers!

I WIN!

The past weekend has been a mixed bag. We attended a fine seminar Saturday, enjoyed worship and breakfast with our son and his family Sunday morning. Then Sunday afternoon I fell ill to a nasty cold/flu made all the worse by my team losing their big game. There is, of course, more to life than winning and losing games, and I'm sure I will soon get over this thing and feel better. This morning I am giving thanks we are still alive and God is still active in His world.

Which brings me to another event of the weekend which involved winning that I could not attend. My nephew Eric Niebuhr, age 50 and one of 8 boys in my sister's family, was laid to rest after a 3 year battle with cancer. He knew he was dying so he wrote a few things for his pastor brother Jon to say at his memorial service. The more memorable comment was simply, "I win!"

In a large family of boys you can imagine the competitive spirit, and Eric loved to win. He wrote, "For all of you that I completed against and beat, in sports or shooting pool, or fishing or in anything else, I just wanted you to know one thing: I WIN! I am with Jesus right now and I win."

What a great attitude to have! When you have faith in Jesus, you're a winner. St. Paul said, "In all these thing we are more than winners through Him who loved us.... Nothing will be able to separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37, 39) Eric was the first of my parents' 20 grandchildren to enter eternal life. 

With faith in Jesus, we are all winners. The world says, "He lost his battle with cancer," but the believer knows that in Jesus he wins the Big One, eternal life with God in heaven. 

Whom do you know who's recently won has the Big One? Because of Jesus and His forgiveness and resurrection we all can have it. Christ's resurrection is better than the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, World Series, Master's, Indy 500, Olympic Gold Medal and every other top award imaginable. And it's ours because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross.

May each of us one day be able to say, "I win!"