David is King

Based on 2 Samuel 5

David was in Hebron when all the tribes of Israel approached him. Look! We are your kinfolk. When Saul was king you were really running the country. Even God told you that you were the shepherd of his people, Israel.

So all the leaders of Israel sat down with David and they made a treaty, with God as their witness. They anointed David King over Israel.

David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned for forty years.

David and his armies marched on Jerusalem, but the Jebusites who dwelt there said, Oh, please. Even the blind and the lame could keep you out of Jerusalem. Go home!

Though the Jebusites were totally convinced that David could not conquer them, he went right ahead and took the fortress of Zion and made the city his home, calling it “City of David.”

He prospered there and built up the city. God was with him.

 Hiram, King of Tyre, sent carpenters, masons and craftsmen along with timbers of cedar to build a house for David. David felt that this was a sure sign that God had confirmed him as Israel’s king, and that the kingdom was recognized by the world at large.

 David took wives and concubines in Jerusalem and had a bunch of kids.

And when the Philistines heard that David was king they came down against him. But God was with David and assured him of victory against them, which he achieved. Twice. He ran them plumb out of the country.

• Takeaway:  David was beloved of God.  Since this is so, clearly you, too, are beloved of God.  David did not live a perfect life; in fact, he was the epitome of the flawed human nature which inhabits us all.  God loves us anyway.
• If that is true, then is it okay for us to live our lives randomly and recklessly, cherishing our sins and polishing our egos?  Not at all.  To receive the love of God, we reciprocate that love, and in so doing we will want to live as God wants us to live.   God will empower us to live the life He has planned for us, and we will thereby reap reward beyond our wildest imaginings.

Where'd It Go?

Banking in the sixties, my money (such as it was) was deposited at Farmers National Bank, locally operated by local people and capitalized largely by local investors.  In fact, that bank could not open a branch across the road, for that was in the next county and it was unlawful to operate a bank across a county line.

Money talks, though, and so do bankers and what they had to say was, "We want more money!"  Their lobbying efforts successfully gained the privilege of free-wheeling banking.  Soon my little local bank had branches in four towns, none of which were in the home county.  Thus it ripened like a plum, and it was soon picked off by a much larger bank in State Capital, Indiana.

It grew.  And the Cincinnati bankers' eyes widened with lust, they salivated with greed, and SC Bank was plucked by a bank in a neighboring state.  Now, following only God and the Feds know how many transactions later my bank has wound up doing business under a set of three initials.  No one knows what the letters represent, and I don't know where it is headquartered; and my money has all been transformed into digital information and disappeared into the ether.

And I am supposed to have faith and confidence in this.

I opened my first pass-book savings account more than sixty years ago.  The account drew a higher rate of interest than do my savings accounts in the bank today, which essentially grant the bank the use of my money for free.

Track Season at Soybean Field

Spring sports season at School in a Soybean Field switches the focus from random play and basketball to track and field.  The seventh grade and social studies teacher, Jack, is also the all-sports coach for the seventh and eighth grade boys.  The school is tiny, but we have some fine specimens of farm-grown boys.  Some of them think they can run, and even fewer of them are right.

Today's story is about track, but it is more about Rosetta.  Rosetta is an eighth grader.  She is an average eighth grader in almost all respects.  Average height, average weight, ordinary well-scrubbed average looks, average scholastic record; this girl is average.  This may seem a non sequitur, inserted here as it is, but trust me, it is germane.  In the day girls who attended SiSF wore dresses, or skirts and blouses or sweaters.  They did not wear jeans, slacks, or shorts.

On the north side of our playground, the coach, the math teacher and I laid out a track.  It was a one-sixth mile oval.  This was the largest oval we could lay out in the allotted space, so the mile run was six laps and the quarter-mile finish line was well beyond the starting point.  You did pick up on the fact that the kids ran 100 yards, not meters, 440 yards, not 400 meters and so forth, because this was truly back in the day.

Many times at recess impromptu races took place on the track, sometimes a mass of kids, sometimes a challenge race.  The thing is, Rosetta could run.  Rosetta was not an average runner.  Rosetta could outrun everyone in the school, even the star track men, over any distance, your choice.  In the dashes, she flew out of the blocks like a ball off the head of Arnie Palmer's driver.  In the distance runs, she could pace herself perfectly and "kick" at exactly the right moment.  Defeat was not an option, and she considered any place but first place to be a defeat.  The boys were chagrined.  They were suffering the sting of humiliation dished out by a mere girl, not realizing that in a matter of a year or two things would happen to their adolescent bodies which would enable some of them to leave Rosetta in the dust.

Well, Title IX at this point was a mere dream in the minds of women who thought that they were suffering ill-treatment in the realm of school athletics; and it would be yet three decades before Patsy Mink was elected to Congress.  That Rosetta could participate in interscholastic meets was nothing more than a strong "I wish" in the minds of the coach, and Rosetta.  But she was a loyal fan, and would show up at all the meets to cheer her classmates to victory, or to console them in their thwarted attempts.

So, this year School in a Soybean Field has one qualifier to represent them at the all-school junior high championship meet in County Seat, Indiana.  This dedicated lad is Melvin, a classmate of Rosetta, and Melvin is a distance runner.  He has qualified for the mile-run. The runners get set for the start, sixteen boys on the cusp of puberty prancing, pacing, and doing jumping-jacks in warmup.
The starter directs the boys to their starting positions, gives the order and fires the pistol.  They are off!

As the lead runners cross the starting point at the end of the first lap, five of them are clustered quite close, the remaining ones beginning already to trail out behind.  Melvin is in third place.  Completion of second lap, same five runners clustered, trail behind getting longer.  Melvin is still in third place.  In the infield where Rosetta has been jumping up and down excitedly as the boys completed the third lap, we see her move to the edge of the grass and snug up against the track itself as the boys make the fourth turn on the third lap.  As they cross the starting point to begin the gun lap, Melvin is in the lead by nearly three yards! 

As Melvin flashes by, Rosetta takes off like the proverbial shot and in a trice is running shoulder-to-shoulder with Melvin, he on the track, she in the grass, her feet shod in black Converse Chuck Taylors, her legs churning, her bright yellow skirt flapping about her legs, her pony-tail flaring out behind her white blouse.

"Pace, pace, Melvin, pace," she is crying as she runs.  "I"ve got you.  Run, run!"  Then as they make the second turn, she sees that Melvin has extended his lead to perhaps eight yards.  "Coast, coast, follow my pace!"  As they make the final turn, Melvin is leading by four yards and Rosetta yells, "Kick, kick!  Race you to the finish!"  and she kicks it.  So does Melvin.  He breaks the tape, staggers into the grass and flops down, the county champion in the mile run!

Rosetta, scarcely breathing hard, runs to Melvin, grabs his left arm and pulls at him yelling, "Get up, you won!  Walk it out!  We won, we won!"

Embracing It!

Hope you have a blessed Independence Day as you celebrate and reflect on our history and how our freedoms are attained and maintained!

That's No Duck

Mallard is a 165 ton steam locomotive that operated on the London and Northeastern Railway.  It holds the official speed record for steam engine.  On July 3, 1938, she made a run pulling a train of seven cars during which she attained an official speed of 125.88 miles per hour.

High-speed rail travel during the age of steam boasted schedules in America, the UK and Europe in which the vehicles would have been compelled to run at speeds in excess of 100 mph.  But Mallard's record stands, though a German train came within a whisker of the record, and various  anecdotal, but unofficial claims of higher speeds in the US have been made.  However, while the Brits were serious about record setting attempts, and carefully monitored such runs, such endeavors never took place on this side of the pond. 

I was traveling from London to Cambridge by train a good many years ago, but post-steam, and I noticed the conductor with his stop-watch checking the passing of mileposts.  I asked him what our speed was.  "Ninety," he said.

I have a soft spot in my heart, or perhaps it is in my head, for rail travel.  I was fortunate enough to have grown up in the era of steam-powered trains.  I had the privilege of making several trips by rail back then.  I have also travelled by diesel locomotive, by bus, by plane, and by automobile.  Just never could stay anchored in one spot.  Unlike Immanuel Kant.  Yet look who is the more noted.

Images:: Wikipedia

Autumn in July

These tulip trees (yellow poplar) are a half-block down the street.  Perhaps we should expect that if Spring starts in February, then Fall should come in July. 

What is that lying on the ground?  Yes, they are fallen, brown leaves.  We usually don't rake until October.  Our river birch in the front yard is at about the same stage as these trees.

It is very disconcerting to see our summer loveliness gone almost before summer is officially underway.

But, far be it from me to complain.

Benhadad

By and by, Benhadad became King of Syria and plotted in his mind to renew Syria's beef with Israel.  He gathered his armies and went up against Samaria and beseiged it to the point of severe famine in the land.  So severe was the famine that the mere head of a donkey¹ sold for eighty pieces of silver², and a pint of chick peas³ was bringing five silver pieces.
Now as it happened the king was walking along the wall when a woman cried out to him, "Help me!"
"Help you what?" asked the king.  "What is the matter with you?"
The woman replied, "Here is this woman who said to me, 'Let us eat your son today, and tomorrow we will eat mine,' so we boiled my son and ate him.  Now it's her turn, and she has hidden her son and refuses to cough him up, so to speak."

When the king heard this, he tore his clothes, and walked upon the wall wearing only sackcloth next to his skin. And he swore by God that he should become food for the people if Elisha's head remained on his shoulders at the end of the day. Now the king sent an executioner down before him to the house where Elisha sat chatting with the elders.  Before the executioner arrived, Elisha said, "Look, this son of a murderer who calls himself king is on his way to remove my head.  Bar the door!  The king cannot be far behind."

The king came, and Elisha told him that on the morrow barley and fine flour would be sold for a shekel in the gates of the city.   The king's aide laughed and snorted, "What? Provender will rain from heaven?"  "Indeed, I tell you the truth, but you shall not partake of the food, not a mouthful."
And that came to pass exactly as Elisha had foretold it; the man who scoffed was trampled to death by the crowd in its rush to obtain food.<sup>4

Based on 2 Kings 6, & 7

1</sup>Recall that the donkey was an "unclean" animal, thus forbidden for food to the Israelites, and the head must surely have been among the least desirable parts of an abominable creature.
²It is difficult to determine exactly the value of a "piece of silver;" but some scholars agree that eighty pieces of silver could be the equivalent of nine or ten months wages for a skilled workman.
³The phrase is translated "a fourth part of a cab of dove's dung" in the King James Version.  Scholars have long debated whether the material is to be taken literally as translated, or as a type of chick pea which is still referred to as "dove's dung" in parts of the Middle East.  Most, I think, tend to the latter.
⁴Between the first sentence of this paragraph and the last, there is a long tale of running soldiers, thieving lepers who get a conscience, and so on.  It is all germane to the story, but the limitations of space restrict the retelling to this footnote.