2020 Vision

FRIENDS: 

My last active blog was in September and just today January 2, 2020 I have rediscovered how to connect my present blogs with my past blogs. With that thought, I will launch 2020 sharing thoughts with my global family that has grown tremendously the past two years. I have a small black 3-ringed notebook that contains this verse that I used often in the numerous funerals I officiated during my active church Ministry. It is entitled “Friends” and reads thus: 

The river flowing gently by,

The rolling meadows, green,

The mountains towering to the sky,

The valleys in between

Are all a part of God’s great scheme

On which our joy depends,

But greatest of them all, I deem

Our friends.

The sunshine and blue skies are fine,

I’m thankful for the flowers,

For they are truly gifts divine

To cheer this world of ours.

But flowers droop ad skies turn gray

And oft the sunshine ends.

God’s greatest blessings, so I say,

Are friends.

When sorrow comes and grief is yours

And hope is lost in gloom,

“Tis then that friendship comes to shine

Within your darkened room.

“Tis then that consolation sweet,

Your bitter woe attends,

For God hath made this world complete

With friends.

I glory in a summer day,

And in the morning sun,

But when my cares are put away,

And all my tasks are done,

When low the shades of evening fall

And night time fast descends,

Most thankful then am I for all

My friends

On one of those occasions, I laid to rest a consecrated Mother and Christian wife. She had been an inspiration to others, right down to her final bed of affliction. What matters half a century later is not her name as much as how we remembered her: “But the pathway of the just is as a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 5:18). 

We remembered  her that day as one who turned her face, her heart, her whole life toward God and our Father set her feet upon “the pathway of the just. I paraphrased her as one who “gripped the hand of God / the hand that led and blest / And let that peace whose storm is calm / Hold kingship in her breast.” 

Hers was the experience of every true disciple of Christ, when evening is not a prelude of  a mistaken sunset and darkness, but the colors of a beautiful Eternal Dawn. For… 

Think of stepping on shore and finding it Heaven! 

Of taking hold of a hand and finding it God’s! 

Of breathing a new air and finding it celestial air! 

Of feeling invigorated and finding it immortality! 

Of passing from storm and stress to a perfect Calm! 

Of waking and finding it home.  

How great is this powerful memory of friends with which God has blessed us. That still leaves us choosing how we conserve our memories and our friends, and whether we feel pangs of guilt or exultation of joy and that brings me to another friend, this friend being the books I read and receive motivation from, that feed my appetite for life.

You ask what drives me in this ninth decade of my life … allow me to share this quote from a recent reading. It comes from Richard Bell’s 2019 publication of Stolen, Five Free Boys Kidnapped into SLAVERY and THEIR ASTONISHING ODDESSEY HOME (ISBN #978-15011-6943-4). Bell describes BLACK HEARTS as he tells of one John Smith “the man who abducted Sam, Joe, Cornelius, Enos, and Alex, was a phantom, a conjuring trick, and a chameleon. Smith was one of his aliases, a convenient, generic, and forgettable disguise. His real name was John Purnell., and he made his living separating children from their parents, and trafficking them into slavery. 

“While some of the other kidnappers who stalked Philadelphia’s streets in the 1820s targeted adults and children in roughly equal numbers. Purnell preferred to prey solely on boys under the age of sixteen. Their size, age, and marginal status made them perfect marks. While young girls typically worked indoors, their brothers were more often out and about unsupervised, and Purnell, surely found ‘slim made’ boys like eight-year-old Alex easier to overpower or choke into silence than full-grown men or women. His snarled threats or the flash of a blade were more likely to intimidate children. Besides, if they owned freedom papers confirming their legal liberty, they rarely carried them with them” (33). 

Purnell was one of our nation’s very first “professional con men.” Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love was “teeming with strangers in the 1820s, and grifters seemed to be everywhere using “every possible variety of confidence trick, though the fundamentals were always the same. Cunning, conviction, and a silver tongue were necessities. So too was the ability to size up someone quickly and project the illusion of shared identity and common cause” (34). 

Does it sound familiar to the year just past? Does it not make you wonder just how far have we progressed in our human journey? Would you believe I received hundreds of fraudulent scam calls in my online journey, which fortunately I have learned to identify fairly well. Would you believe my household received dozens of scam and robo calls on our house phone here in Kentucky every week that went by? It causes me to conclude with Paul “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.” Paul left  us a long list that is quite familiar (Romans 1:31). 

Paul left is with this thought: “Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but they approve those who practice them” (v32). This list of dirty linen has the approval of a huge portion of today’s global culture, otherwise life as we share it would take on a far different pattern of behavior. The John Purnell’s are ingrained in every strata of American society from the White House to Joliet Prison, in every ethnic shade of humanity, and in every nation around our globe.

What I care about today, 1-2-2020, is not your color or your culture, but I do care about your  creed for that determines your behavior. We act out of what we believe; what we do is what we are, like it or not. When we deceive, we are liars. When we take what is not ours, we are thieves. When we love God above all else, we love our neighbor as ourself and find compatibility and togetherness.  

On this January 2, 2020, I am walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com, reminding you that God made you in his image and that makes you a piece of Art of inestimable value. You may be a stolen, abused, or failed piece of humanity, but the Christmas Story reaffirms that you are POSTED PROPERTY AND YOU WILL NEVER BE BEYOND THE REACH OF GOD’S LOVE AND nothing you ever did is beyond his ability to renew, restore and repair you.  That is my 2020 Vision.