Barb Wire- no Problem

We were in Kentucky for Christmas 2017.

A young man whom we had known from before was at the church service on Christmas. It was the first that anyone had seen him since his enlistment on October 19 in the Army and his deployment for basic training at Fort Leonard Woods in MO. He shared quite a lot about his experience there. It was intriguing to hear of the hardships that these guys are put through to turn them into educated, competent warriors. He is a bit older than his peers, being 22 and having been out of school and in a job for several years. His wisdom and maturity level allowed him to do really well during his training, receiving numerous citations for his leadership and competence. He was especially thrilled with the ending to a rather sad story of one of his co-trainees. This man had a brother who had died during the training. The military was extremely caring for this guy, providing him with transportation and time-off to attend the funeral. And David’s squad came together and raised over $2000 to give to this man as a gift. This act of comradery and kindness earned special recognition from the commander himself. His platoon of 60 trainees emerged as one of the best that this commander had ever trained.

However, there was one particular time during his training that this soldier felt like the spiritual winds were blowing against him. For several days he had just been unable to excel. He remembered that it was one month after he had left for training. He asked the leaders of the church if something had happened at the church during that time that might have caused the heaviness. During those heavy days he was undergoing weapons testing. He had a terrific headache and then needed to go the bathroom intensely. He just could not get his weapons training score high enough. He was only able to hit 22 of the 40 targets rather than the minimum 23. If he could not pass this, he was going to have to go through the whole training cycle again! It turns out that this short hiatus in excelling happened on November 19. Unbeknownst to him at the time, this was the exact date that his friend at the church had died of an accidental gunshot wound. The church members were reeling from the tragedy and many had expressed their wish that this man could have been there to lend his support. He was only learning about this from the conversation that night. It was almost eerie to see how his spirit must have been connected with that tragic deed across the intervening miles. God’s Spirit truly works in marvelous ways. Apparently, it is not restricted by the barb wire and perimeter fences surrounding a military camp!

Unappreciated Originations: Where Did the Week Come From?

Here is a little analogy that I have been using for many years. I just happened to share this again with a lady who was waiting along with me at the drug store for our prescriptions to be filled. Seeing the light of surprised understanding flash into her eyes, I was again convinced that it is indeed an analogy that can jolt our sensibilities and awaken a new understanding of our daily lives. 

Consider with me for a moment, about where our concepts of time come from -- the day, for instance. From whence did it arise? To give you a slight clue, imagine that as I ask this question I am standing in front of you, slowly rotating my index finger  around in a circle. The obvious answer, along with the clue from the twirling index finger will quickly produce the answer; it comes from the rotation of the earth on its axis. 

Well then, where does our idea of the year come from? Again the obvious answer, supported by the slowly rotating finger, will bring forth the answer; from the rotation of the earth around the sun!

Great! Now getting slightly harder; where does the month come from?  Ahh! That comes from the rotation of the moon around the earth. (Ok. Not precisely, but close enough that it is called the Lunar month)

So now, with my finger still spinning in space, comes the last and hardest question. Where does the week come from?

Don't be embarrassed to stand there scratching your chin! Everyone else I ask this question of in America does exactly that. My rotating finger has gotten them searching their scientific knowledge to figure out what else happens in the astrological world on a seven day periodicity. Inevitably, the answer will come, "I really don't know!"

Which is part of my point here. I said "America" above, because if I do this exact same questioning with the spinning finger in China, the answer is always a very quick and ready, "It comes from the Bible! From the first chapter of Genesis!" And I can state this authoritatively because I have done this many times over in both countries. Even with Chinese "atheists". 

How is it that the Chinese are aware of something that we, here in America, so steeped in the Bible, seem to miss? How could we possibly miss that one of the most precious creations coming out of the Genesis 1 was the week? Nothing else in the universe operates on a 7 day cycle. If God wanted to build into the heart of man the idea of a way of ordering life such that we would work for 6 days and then rest on the seventh, He had to do it with a good story. A great story! The story of creation. The whole world orders its life according to the week. And those societies that have tried to use other periods for a "week" have gone back to it. 

So how is it that the West, can so universally miss this central theme of the first chapter of Genesis? After all, the idea of the Sabbath was one of the most pervasive themes throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament. Violation of it was one of the "high crimes" that Jesus was accused of by the Jewish authorities. He was never accused of promoting the heresy that the birds and the fish did not appear on the planet until the fifth, 24 hour day, 4000 years before he was standing there in the temple. His ministry was not to validate some "scientific" understanding of how God created the world, but to share his insights, as co-creator, about why God did it.  The West has so often hijacked that story to be some highly detailed scientific account of how God made the world, rather than why God made the world, that we miss this point.

Put yourself back into those primitive "hunter-gatherer" days when all tribes on earth knew that their very existence was predicated upon spending every day seeking food to survive. And now, suddenly, you become aware that the neighboring tribe sits and does nothing on every seventh day! Well, not exactly nothing. They spend the day thinking about why they are here in the first place and in contemplating the One who created them! What an odd bunch of people. But it was exactly this penchant for obeying this God-given rhythm of life that became one of the most lasting,  civilizing gifts of the Jews to mankind. A gift, rooted in a divinely inspired story. The West, having spent hundreds of years overlaying this story with scientific inquiry, miss, what the Eastern mind can clearly see in an instant.

Married to Diversity

In my last blog, I had drawn out the conclusion from one of the question marks in Mark 10 that the human race, and really almost all of life, was based upon a reproductive design that was capable of bringing, not cloned organisms, but diverse organisms and humans into existence. To this point, marriage, as Jesus describes it in Mark 10:5-9, was designed in at the very beginning of creation by God so as to create and preserve the crown of his creation, human beings. It was not some judgement made by Moses, or any other sage down through the ages, that is the foundation of the marriage institution. But really, it can be seen from the creation itself. ^{Roman 1:20} For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

But now, to farther extend that observation, it is interesting to look at how the Bible speaks of "The Church" as the "Bride" of Christ. We have already noted that one of the things that the bride does is to bring not a clone of the male into existence, but a completely new and diverse being; a unique mixing of the original gene set. My musings here would be to consider whether that is one of the intentions of Christ in using the marriage analogy. It could have been his way of breathing diversity into his followers who would "take up their cross and follow him." They would be followers of the Master, uniquely able to explore all the diverse nature of God by each grouping being able to specifically focus on some part of God's character. 

A bit of this can be seen in Mark 10:17 when this rich young ruler comes to Christ and asks about the proper path to eternal life. After cross examining him on how well he is following the standard path of keeping the commandments, Jesus points out that there is still but one thing that he lacks; heart-felt charity. That if he was to pick up this characteristic, and come and follow him, that eternal life (as well as great blessing and persecution) would indeed lie in his future. Here we can see that Jesus has diversified the path to eternal life as set forth by the authorities of that day to customize it for this individual. It was a new challenge that he as a unique person really needed to concentrate on. 

Is something like this what is happening with the diversity that we see in the denominationalism  that has cause so many splits in the Christian church. Might it be God's way of showing that the model of marriage is also active, not always in a negative way, but in a positive way, to allow us to see God from a multi-faceted perspective that spiritual clones could never be able to observe. Might it be that my not being able to understand a agree with your Biblical interpretation is not a bad thing, but a good thing. That instead of lobbing grenades at the people not walking our "narrow path", we might do better to hold hands across the divide that separates us; much like we often have to do with our marriage partners!  

Questioning the Question Marks

Some time ago, I developed a novel kind of Bible study technique that has proved to be wonderful method for digging deeper into scripture. It has led to some stunning insights that I have not seen uncovered  elsewhere.

The technique is really quite simple to apply. Whenever you see a question mark (?) in the scripture, you stop and analyze it. You ask a series of questions. 1) Who is asking, 2) Who are they asking it of, 3) What is the "right answer" that they are expecting, 4) what answer is given,  and then 5) what is going on here?

Doing this causes you to stop in the middle of very familiar passages and leads you down some very unfamiliar paths. That is exactly what happened at my 6 am,  Saturday men's breakfast meeting yesterday. We were studying Mark 10. And there, in verse 2 was a question mark! Analysis required!

Mark 10 (NIV) ¹Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

² Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

The Pharisees were asking Jesus a question. Their clear aim was to trap him into making the same ruling against divorce that had gotten John the Baptist in trouble with the Herod Antipas and Herodias affair and resulted in his head decorating the platter at a state banquet. A similar fate, for this irritating Galilean upstart, would have suited them just fine. If Jesus gave them either a yes or a no answer, they knew that they had him trapped.

But Jesus, as is so often the case, didn't give them a yes or a no answer. Instead, he answered their question with a question; a very common ploy of his. What was going on here?

First of all, you must realize that this question was not at all about marriage. It is about authority. Think about it. Suppose you were to ask some person on the street this same question. If they would say yes, it is not lawful to divorce ones wife, would only receive that answer as word on the subject? Of course not. You would only accept that finality of that answer if you knew the person answering it had some high level of authority. Otherwise, you would brush off the answer as, "Well, that's just what you say!" Clearly, the Pharisees underlying motive is to question the authority of Jesus to adjudicate anything spiritual or ethical. Answering questions like this was, after all, their exclusive, privileged domain as interpreters of scripture.

It is not therefore surprising that Jesus recognizes this and turns the discussion into a discussion of authority. He points the question back at them by asking them what Moses, their accepted authority on all things scriptural, had to say to this.

³ “What did Moses command you?” he replied.

Now this was easy territory for the Pharisees. They knew immediately what their person of authority on scripture had written.

⁴ They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

But now Jesus drills down to the real basis for where authority comes from. 

Jesus replied. ⁶ “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’

Where does the authority for interpreting where the rules and regulations enumerated by Moses come from? It comes for God, at the very beginning; in creation. And the Pharisees also knew that Jesus had laid claim to actually being with God there at the very creation of the world.

John 1:2   The Word (Jesus) was with God in the beginning.

So, who has the authority to adjudicate everything spiritual? It is Jesus, the one who was with God in the beginning. The man whom these Pharisees were deviously trying to get decapitated with their questioning!

So now that Jesus has established that he is the very Son of God, the Creator of the world, he is able to go on and help them in interpreting the very clever inherent design of creation. Something that he and the Father had worked out before the foundations of the earth were laid. The creators had, at that time, a far reaching plan for how this creation would work. One of these plans lay in how life would reproduce and thrive on this new planetoid they were forming. How is one living being going to create another? They could have opted upon something simple like with an amoeba which reproduces by separating. If you want to have a baby, you just take a sharp knife and cut off a finger. You then place that severed finger into a Kangaroo-like body pouch built into your chest cavity and keep it moisturized and lubricated by occasionally letting spittle run down your chin into the pouch. And after 9 months of drooling, you would carefully reach into that pouch and pull forth a wholly formed little living being that was just like you, only smaller! A wonderful, miniature clone of you. 

A plan -- but not a very good plan as the angels, overseeing the design reviews for this new planetoid, were quick to point out. "How could there ever be the level of diversity," they asked, " that will be needed to allow these new beings to eventually inhabit every diverse area of this planet. Life must  be able to diverge in glorious ways from the original life forms if people were eventually to become so weirdly different that some may thrive on the frozen tundra of Alaska while others would greatly prefer the sandy beaches of Tahiti." So now there grew, out of these "pre-world design reviews", the idea that the starting point would be not just life, but male and female life. If two distinctly different, yet mostly-the-same type beings would need to couple their genes to make a new lifeform, then there would be room for diversity to happen with each new birth!

A great idea, but accompanied by its own problems. How do you get these two distinctly different lifeforms, these males and females, to couple together. To meet this challenge, the creators decided to build into these separate beings mysterious, and to this very day, indiscernible, attractive impulses; mixtures of esthetics and chemistry and, well, blind-love craziness! Somehow, beyond all odds, these males and females were going to be infected with something that would make them seek each other out. And with that seeking and finding would come an irresistible desire for coupling together to create new beings! The angels gave this novel idea the codename Secret Element X, or SEX for short. And the infection of life with this new, mysterious element would provide a huge amount of drama for the history of the world!

This same "infection" would be part of all lifeforms that were going to have this strange, yet marvelous beginning as male and female, so  all life could share in this pathway to diversity. 

But in the case of male and female of the homo erectus type of lifeform, the wise creators had to devise yet an additional glorious mechanism to counter another problem. In this case, they realized that the babies arising from this coupling of these advanced lifeforms were going to be so complex and so cerebral that it they were going to need an excruciating amount of care over a long period of time. None of the stuff like with the baby giraffe so ardently watched on that live Zoo Cam where the baby giraffe drops out and then quickly, without the viewing audience even getting bored with the whole development thing, struggles shakily onto its wobbly feet. No, these highly ordered lifeforms, carrying in their craniums the brain power that would allow them to even try to grasp the thoughts of their creators, would need to have abundant and long-term nurturing. These pairing couples were going to have to also carry with them in their design some kind of a switch that got flipped as a result of this coupling. Once this switch was flipped by the very act that would lead to the birth of a new baby, there would be a bond that would form between them that was meant to mysteriously pull them together for a lifetime. Or as Jesus said it:

⁷ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, ⁸ and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

The angels, watching carefully over this unfolding design requirement, quickly added their stamp of approval and the thing became the law of the humanoid creation with God and Jesus adding their signatures!

⁹ Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

And that, at least in my humble opinion, is what lay hidden underneath that question mark, waiting to be revealed by that novel study method of questioning the question marks!

Oh, but wait! That is not all that lies buried there...!

How Big is the Universe

I was leaving the Advance Auto Parts store the other day and this man exited behind me with his son. I noted the he had a tee-shirt on with the words, "Mad Scientist" inscribed across it. I asked him if the shirt gave an accurate description of its owner. He looked down at his shirt, smiled and said, "Yes! I am a kind of crazy scientist." He told me that he was a biochemist working for J&J in large molecule research. I asked if his son also shared the "mad" trait.

"Oh, for sure!" he said and then turned to his son and told him to tell me what he did.

"I sell solar panels for residential households in Nevada and Rhode Island," he said.

I asked him if it was true that solar panels will pay for themselves in several years of use. He told me that indeed they would. But then I asked if they would do this if they were not getting help from government subsidies. He admitted that they needed subsidies to make them pay off. He immediately saw my point. These things were only profitable because the rest of us were paying taxes to make them so; they were not cost effective on their own merits.

As this point sank in, I pointed to the trees lining the parking lot and told him that I really love the "solar collectors" that God has put up in the trees. It quickly dawned on him that I was talking about the leaves, now turning a bright yellow in the Autumn sunlight. He said that there was research taking place that would make it possible to harness sunlight and use it to fixate carbon molecules, just like the chlorophyll was able to do. He and his dad both agreed that the best that they could do as mad scientists was to copy those things already being done by nature. It was obvious that the three of us standing there in the parking lot were all being inspired by the same wonder of God's creation.

So, I went one step bigger and said how it is amazing to realize that the universe as big as it is because God knew when he was making it that someday we were going to need cellphones. And in order to have all the requisite molecular compounds for such devices, there was going to have to be a universe large enough to accommodate three generations of exploding, supernova stars in order to fuse all of these compounds together in solar furnaces. A big smile broke across his face! "Yes! Isn't that such an amazing wonder!" he said. Obviously, this young man had already been aware of the fact that first generation stars create elements up to oxygen, second generation up to iron and third generation create all the rest.

God truly knew that we were coming and provided so lavishly in advance for us. We truly serve a wonderful God. And all that could be seen standing there in the Advance Auto Parts parking lot by merely lifting our eyes to the heavens!

A Divine Re-encounter

June 8, 2017 Trip to Oberlin, Ohio

On Tuesday evening, Karen looked up from her Facebook and said that Connie had just posted that Simon needs a ride to Oberlin College this week. "Was there anyone who could give him a ride?" I immediately said that I could. I did not have any work at Alderfer Glass this week and I would welcome the opportunity to spend some time with this gentleman from Korea whom I highly admire. Besides, it would be a chance to have some conversations that were not in my typical “echo chamber”. Simon is a 22-year-old from Korea who obviously has a different slant on world events than I do. And he is an excellent English speaker and is very articulate. It would be a pleasure. So, I sent a text to Connie saying that I could take him. Her incredulous response was to ask me, “Are you serious?” I assured her that no, I was Ken! But I went on to assure her that I was also serious! So, it was arranged. I would meet at the Hunsberger house for a patented Hunsberger breakfast at 8:00 Thursday morning and leave on the 450 mile, 8 hour trip at 9:00. The breakfast was great as well as the surprise visit to the breakfast table of Kaci, Tyler’s lovely girlfriend. Also appearing, but barely functioning, was Tyler's sister Lanae, freshly dressed in her Chick-filet uniform. It was clearly way too early a breakfast for Lanae's liking!

The trip was full of interesting conversation and an increasing understanding of each other’s worlds. Unfortunately, there was an accompanying accumulation of the effects of the morning’s coffee that needed to find an appropriate receptacle. So, we found a gas station and I engaged the lady behind the counter with some conversation as Simon used the rest room. By the time he came back out, the lady had tears in her eyes from having told me the sad story of events of her morning. To cheer her up, I got her a CrossPuzzle from out of the car so she could focus her mental energy on using it to challenge her husband that evening. She was deeply thankful. Simon was equally amazed that I would talk with a perfect stranger. That just does not happen in Korea! But it turned out not to be the last time during the day that he would be amazed.

Relieved, with emptied tanks, we proceeded on across Interstate I80, thoroughly engaged in conversation and completely unmindful of the fact the car was also emptying its tank! That was until the low fuel warning light came on and the needle of the gauge was no longer registering! Fortunately, considering our absent mindedness, there was an exit just ahead and a gas station at the end of the exit! Unfortunately, the station had been out of service for several years! Fortunately, Simon could summon up the address of the closest station. Unfortunately, it was 7 miles distant in the wrong direction! But when we finally found it, the proprietor actually came out to pump the gas for us. 

I asked him, “Did I get on the Interstate going the wrong way? Am I in New Jersey? That is the only place in the nation where people pump gas for you!”

He assured me that, "No, this was full service gas station."

He seemed like a friendly kind of older gentleman so I asked, “What makes you an interesting person?”

He looked at me in a curious sort of way and replied, “Well, I’m not that interesting, but this town is! It is the home of the Piper Cub airplane. We had our own silk mill, our own lumber industry and our own chair manufacturing company."

With Simon gazing in astonishment at the scene from the other side of the car, amazed that I had engaged in a conversation with yet another stranger, the man continued with a very full-bodied description of the lively life of this little mountain town that he had experienced over the past 40 years of owning the only gas station. When the gas pump clicked off, I paid him, thanked him for the gas, the service, and the stories. As sort of a reward for his kind service, I dug into the truck of the car and got out a CrossPuzzle which I presented to him. As his gaze fastened upon what I had laid in his hand, a soft look came into his eyes and he started to tell me about his own ministry using crosses.

Apparently, some years back, an atheist, living in the little Christmas village of Frankenmuth, Michigan, had tried to make them get rid of the two crosses decorating the bridge coming into the town. Being successful with that request, he then tried to get the town to remove the cross from their city shield. The residents had had enough and rebelled by making little white crosses with which they began to use to decorate their front yards. Dan, the gentleman who had just finished filling my tank, had seen these crosses and was inspired to make many more crosses like them and to distribute to people across America as a statement that reminded people that this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. The Presbyterian Church, down the street from the gas station, entered into this project with Dan and together they made and distributed 1500 of the little white crosses to be placed in front yards across America. The called the effort "Cross The Country" with the "T" in "The" being shaped like a cross.

So here I had, by pure happenstance and a bit of absent-mindedness, run into another man who shared my same ministry objective of getting the Cross across America! He gave me one of his white crosses to take along with me on my trip. The two "Cross-men" had met by happy chance...and it seemed like a rather wondrous thing! And it was – except that it was going to get better!

Dan told us the short route back to I80, which we followed, and were soon on our way westward toward Oberlin, Ohio. Upon arriving, Simon did a great job showing me around this uber-liberal college, nestled into the solid conservative landscape of Northern Ohio. He was planning to stay there for two weeks, studying for his part in Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni, which he will be performing in Italy this summer along with 44 of his colleagues from the Oberlin Classical Music Conservatory.

At breakfast the next morning, I told Simon that I was planning to take a leisurely trip home and possibly try to find the place along I80 where the RV had broken down on the way home from Colorado last May. I had taken three friend, Rob, Jim and Tyler to the Christian Writers Conference in Estes Park, Colorado and had been returning along route I80 when the vehicle suddenly lost power. We fortunately could limp off the road at a nearby exit and pull in to a functioning garage close by. After unsuccessfully trying to diagnose it for several hours, they sent me to another, rather dilapidated garage several miles down the road. There, a kindly and energetic young man had wheeled under the stricken RV on his broken creeper cart and had separated the exhaust header from the muffler, allowing the engine to breath, or more precisely, exhale, again. That simple, minor adjustment allowed us to get back on the road and complete the final leg of the "Trip of a Lifetime"! It was this kindly, young man on the creeper who I was determined to find and thank for his generosity. He had refused payment, saying, "No, just glad to be able to help!" I had given him one of my CrossPuzzles and Rob had given him several copies of his recently released book. It would be fun to find him again.

Except he wasn't there. Or at least he wouldn't have been there had the relaxing trip across the rolling mountains of central Pennsylvania gone as planned! But it didn't! At about mile marker 65, everything came to a screeching halt. Cars, trucks and semis were lined up in a double-wide ribbon stretching to the horizon. All of them traveling at zero miles per hour. And a quick look at the traffic indicator on my phone's GPS showed a solid red line caused by an accident 15 miles ahead on the Eastbound side of I80. East was the direction I was going. But...maybe...if I get off at exit 70 I can sneak around the mess by going through Brookville and coming out ahead of it. Yes, route 322 through Brookville also showed some congestion, but by zooming in real tight on the GPS screen, I could see a little side road that lead to yet another side road. If I took both of them it would get me around that jam-up! I had a plan! Except that that plan didn't work as planned either! After traversing that pot-hole infested first little side road I came upon a brand-new accident, right in the middle of the intersection with the next side road. And it was not going to be cleared any time soon. So, there was no option but to re-traverse all the potholes and wait in the line of traffic edging its way through Brookville. Although not in a hurry after all, my patience was wearing a bit thin, especially after I checked the GPS traffic situation again and found that that 15-mile red line had completely disappeared while I was navigating through the potholes! If I had only been patient...

But at least the miraculous disappearance of the red line of stopped traffic on my GPS assured me that it was now easy sailing eastward through the mountains, towering up into the crystal blue skies, raked occasionally by wispy cirrus clouds. I soon arrived at that fateful exit where the RV had made its gasping, under-powered exit. And there was the garage that had so unsuccessfully changed the oil filter and checked the exhaust pressure and did everything they could to fix the things that were not wrong. And yes! This road looked familiar as I recalled landmarks along the way that we had crept by in second gear; the highest gear that the dying engine of the RV could achieve a year ago. And there was the dilapidated repair shop, surrounded now by even more broken-down trucks and rusty, indeterminate heaps of steel.  Dunkle Construction, the home of that kindly young man on the creeper. Except that when I made my way into the interior of this forbidding building to the cave-like room that served as the command center of the enterprise, the young lady greeted me with, "Sorry! There is no one here to do repair or pick up stones. They are all gone."

"Oh, that's ok," I replied. "I'm not here for repair or for rocks. I just want to talk about that thing by your elbow."

"What?" came the surprised response.

"I want to talk about that thing by your elbow!"

The girl rotated her gaze down to her elbow which was resting on the counter, brushing up against the CrossPuzzle that I had left there the year before. "You see, I made that cross!" I said.

Recognition burst into her eyes as she picked up the cross! "Oh, you're the guy with the RV! Did you ever make it home?"

"Yes," I said. "We most certainly did! No problem at all except that the loud exhaust noise almost caused a horse and buggy to plummet into the creek when the horse bolted at the sound of the engine. And the fact that we needed to keep all the windows open in the van the whole way home to prevent the build-up of exhaust fumes from the compromised exhaust system!"

"But," I continued, "I really wanted to come back and thank that young man on the broken creeper."

"Oh, Evan!", she exclaimed! "He's a gem! Always looking to help other in a jam. Which is what you guys were in last year! But he isn't here now. Sorry!"

"That's ok," I said. "I was just in the area and thought I would stop by. In fact, I was somewhere near here yesterday as well, looking for a gas station. I almost ran out of gas and finally found this little one-pump station where the guy was very kindly. And talkative. The amazing thing is that he also makes crosses; little white ones."

"Oh!" she said. "That's Evan's granddad, Dan Duck!"

As I stood in stunned amazement, she told me that she had not actually seen any of the crosses. So, I suggested that she go out to the car with me and I would show her one. I dug the one that Dan had given me out of the back seat and was handing it to her just as a truck came wheeling into the parking lot.

"Oh, there's Evan now!" she exclaimed.

I carried the 2-foot-high, white cross over to the man getting out of the truck. "Have you ever seen one of these?" I asked holding it in front of him.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "My grandfather and I have made hundreds of them!"

"And do you know who I am," I asked.

"Yes!" he said as he suddenly remembered me. "You're the guy with the RV!"

"Exactly," I said. "And it was our grandfather that gave me this white cross yesterday! I think we have just completed a really big divine re-encounter!" I grasped his hand and gave it a fervent shake. "Your repair job worked splendidly and I just want to stop and thank you for your skill and generosity. But it looks like God wanted to make the occasion even more special! And if God had not arranged for that traffic jam on I80 to synchronize our being here together in this parking lot, I would not have been able to meet you!"

There was just one more thing I needed to do to put a lovely bow on top of this present from God. That was to revisit Dan Duck at the gas station. Unbeknownst to me, it was only about two miles up the road! So, I drove over and pulled up to the pump. Again, Dan emerged from the station to service his returning customer. Only this time I told him I didn't need gas. I just wanted to share a story. "Do you know a man by the name of Evan Duck?" I asked.

He looked at me questioningly, not knowing where this was going. "Yes, he's my grandson!" he said.

"He certainly is! And a wonderful grandson at that!" I went on to fill in the rest of the story for him. What a thrill that was! And then I gave him one of my Classic CrossPuzzles, one of the large ones that I made before Tyler had me shrink them to half size. And with a white cross in one arm and a CrossPuzzle in the other, he posed for a picture - Pennsylvania's two Cross-men united with each other's crosses, having found each other while standing next to the only gas pump in Mill Hall, Pennsylvania! A truly divine re-encounter!

If your tank's running low, you can enjoy Dan's story and hospitality for yourself if you stop at the only Gulf station in Mill Hall, Pennsylvania, just north of the Interstate I80. He'll pump the gas for you!

Surrounded by Favor

Surrounded by God’s Favor

Psalms 5:12

It was Sunday evening, July 9, 2017. It had been a lovely day for a relaxing ride on the motorcycle along the Delaware River through Point Pleasant. Now it was time to kick back for the evening. Except that it was not to be. The phone rang. It was one of my coworkers from Alderfer. And he had a small problem. His car wouldn’t start and he is looking for a way to jump it.

“I’ll be there in 20 minutes,” I told him and set off to find my jumper cables and embark on the short drive to Lansdale. When I arrived, they were both on their phones, searching the internet for any information as to why the car would not start. And it wouldn’t! Even with the jumper cables hooked up and the battery obviously having enough power, nothing would happen when the key was turned on.

So here we were, with a dead car that needed to be moved and Nate figuring that he would need to quit his job and work for the beer distributer down the street since he had no car to drive to work. I stood there, staring at the dead engine wondering how in the world this situation in any way showed that I was “surrounded by God’s favor”. But it was in the midst of pondering those dismal thoughts that the idea hit me that at least I could lend them my car for the next week while they got this mess figured out. Karen was heading to Florida for a week and her car would be sitting in the garage, unused. And then another thought came into my mind. Maybe this is an appropriate time to call Keith, my good friend from church. So, I dialed his number.

Keith told me that he had finished all the things that he was doing for the evening and had just sat down on the patio to rest. But sure, he would be glad to help. And he happened to have a car trailer. He would hook it up and be there in 20 minutes. He would also bring along the block and tackle to pull the dead car onto the trailer.

When I broke the news and the plan to Nate and McKenna, she told me that she had been sitting there in the car thinking that she was about to have a heart attack! The stress was intense inside her chest. But suddenly now, from out of despair, there appeared to be hope. And indeed, the trailer was perfect. The block and tackle, which had served me so well in replacing the broken glass at the top of a library elevator tower, once again came to the rescue as we three strong men heaved on the rope and McKenna operated the steering and the brakes to get the clunker safely aboard the trailer.

They had found a garage not too far away where we could drop the car off, hoping that the owner would take pity on the poor vehicle and get it going the next day. Nate traveled along with Keith and McKenna jumped into the car with me. And it soon became apparent that the surrounding favor of the Lord was continuing during that short drive. I brought up the subject of the “Patterns of Evidence” that my friend Tim Mahoning had made. I knew that McKenna had watched it. She told me that they had just happened upon this movie and had watched it on a whim. She had really resonated with the way Tim had shown a timeline in that movie that aligned Egyptian and Hebrew history. The visualization of how these histories could align was so compelling that she ended up watching it multiple times.

Ultimately, she claimed that it was this movie that pushed her over the edge into accepting Christianity. She had been deeply immersed in the occult from age 13. She had dabbled very deeply into the dark sides of Egyptology, even claiming to have personally met with the ancient Egyptian deities. But the Lord had opened her eyes to Christianity through her relationship with Nate. However she was unable to embrace it because, in her skeptical mind, she could not believe in the truth of the Bible if its historical record of the Israelites in Egypt did not align with the accepted Egyptian timeline. But here was this movie, suddenly correcting that timeline to give an astute recalculation that showed that, indeed, the history of the Bible could be correct. And if that history was true, then Christ’s calling upon her heart could also be true. So, with the movie, having broken down that last dividing wall between her and her Savior, she moved from the world of spiritual darkness into spiritual light.

The fact that a dark, despairing car problem could be turned into such a wonderful opportunity for Keith and me to share Christian kindness and to provide me with the opportunity to find such a brilliant validation of my friend’s movie was not lost on me. Tim had struggled for 13 years to put that movie together. I called him and gave him MeKenna’s name. They plan to have some interesting discussions together in the future. And Keith, for his part said, “I love doing these little deeds of kindness!” And Nate and McKenna, isolated here in an unfamiliar town, away from friends and support structure, were given a real-life example of being surrounded by God’s favor!

Big Curls of Glass

Wednesday was a BIG day by many measures. It was the day that Alderfer Glass installed their biggest pieces of glass ever; four pieces measuring 8 x 13 feet, 1/2 inch thick and weighing 631pounds each. And they had to be lifted 5 feet high to set them! A rather colossal task that took 8 guys from Alderfer and several of the other kindly contractors who were on site to help. And I was largely in charge of the engineering of the project. Thanks immensely to Keith Hoover and his gracious lending of an old-fashioned block-and-tackle, I was able to rig up a crane that helped lift and guide the glass safely to their setting channels. And by strapping two drywall carts back-to-back, I engineered a carrying system that safely (well almost safely!) carried the glass to the setting area. The "almost" was due to the one piece sliding off the cart and the corner crashing down onto the 1/4 piece of plywood but not breaking into a million pieces somehow! What a sudden thrill that was that the glass stayed intact and no one got hurt! These pieces of glass were the signature element of the Bucks County Curling Center; the largest curling center in America. Now everyone can sit in 70 degree temperature and watch curling happen right in front of them, just like they were sitting in their own living room at home! There are actually two rinks there and they are planning to make both of them to be used only for curling. No more ice hockey! Sorry guys!

Chinese footprints in Souderton

Chinese footprints in my house

Dorcas came to my house this week for an acclimation week into American culture. What a blessing to have her be able to come from Beijing to America and study at the Alliance Theological Seminary at Nyack. And what a privilege to be part of her epic journey. It is great to have her with us!