FRIENDS

Following below is a poem I have turned to many times during my decades of ministry. I have always valued my friends and carefully collected them as valued gems, but since the departure of my beloved companion some three years ago, my passion for friends has taken a different turn. What quickly becomes obvious when you peruse my Facebook traffic, you will see many friends who look very different from this White Anglo-Saxon American Protestant. 

It all began when Olga responded to a blog I wrote a few years back; she wondered what I knew about the followers of D. S. Warner, the Patron Saint of our Faith Family. Olga grew up as part of a German settlement in Kazakhstan. In time, she became part of a Khazik colony migrating north and west seventeen hundred miles that homesteaded about three hundred miles west of Moscow, Russia, where they established a permanent Church of God Missionary Colony.

My involvement soon connected to other friends and began a slow trek that eventually took on a global shape. From the Ukraine it found its way to Northeast India and a tiny newer nation called Meghalaya,  across Asia, into the continent of Africa, and beyond. With time, it took on a global shape and the lyrics of "I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God ..." that Bill and Gloria Gaither had introduced at the 1980 World Conference of the Church of God meeting in Anderson, Indiana that year. What a celebration that was, attended by somewhere between thirty and forty thousand people.

Today is  Monday, the beginning of Christmas Week 2020, a year we will long remember as the year of the covid-19 pandemic; a year of tragedy and suffering and untold deaths. It was a year when Friends suddenly translated into meanings we had neglected far too long. We have experienced a full year of pandemic, during which we have reconsidered our friends and memorialized a host of deceased friends. It is with that thought in mind that I turn back to these simple poetic lines I have used so many times to celebrate the worth of friends joining together in acknowledging and sharing our humanity as a collective body in a meaningful way.

Christmas concludes 2020 by introducing 2021. For what it is worth; there may be no greater source of joy in God's scheme of things ... SO, let us join together and launch our New Year with a renewed sense of the worth of our ''FRIENDS''

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,

          Are 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 and 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's day,

          And in the morning sun,

But wh--Authen 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. 

                                                             --Author Unknown

                                      IDEA KIT, Golden, CO (early 50s)

"LUCKY TO BE AN AMERICAN"

 "I grew up with many of these fears imprinted on me," writes Barack Obama.

"In Hawaii, I knew families who'd lost loved ones at Pearl Harbor. My grandfather, his brother, and my grandmother's brother had all fought in World War II.  I was raised believing that nuclear war was a very real possibility. In grade school, I watched coverage of Olympic athletes being slaughtered by masked men in Munich;  in college I listened to Ted Koppel marking the number of days Americans were being held hostage in Iran. Too young to have known the anguish of Vietnam firsthand, I had witnessed only the honor and restraint of our service members during the Gulf War, and like most Americans I viewed our military operations in Afghanistan after 9/11 as both necessary and just.

But another set of stories had also been etched into me--different though not contradictory--about what America meant to those living in the world beyond it, the symbolic power of a country built upon the ideals of freedom. I remember being seven or eight years old and sitting on the cool floor tiles of our house on the outskirts of Jakarta, proudly showing my friends a picture book of Honolulu with its high-rises and city lights and wide, paved roads. I would never forget the wonder in their faces as I answered their questions about life in America, explaining how everybody got to go to school with plenty of books, and there were no beggars because most everyone had a job and enough to eat. later, as a young man, I witnessed my mother's impact as a contractor with organizations like USAID, helping women in remote Asian villages get access to credit, and the lasting gratitude those women felt that Americans an ocean away actually cared about their plight. When I first visited Kenya, I sat with newfound relatives who told me how much they admired American democracy and rule of law--a contrast, they said, to the tribalism and corruption that plague their country,

Such moments taught me to see my country through the eyes of others. I was reminded how lucky I was to be an American, to take none of these blessings for granted. I saw first hand the power of our example exerted on the hearts and minds of people around the world. But with that came a corollary lesson: an awareness of what we risked when our actions failed to live up to our image and our ideals, the anger and resentment this could breed, the damage that was done. When I heard Indonesians talk about the hundreds of thousands slaughtered in a coup--widely believed to have CIA backing--that had brought a military dictatorship to power in 1967, or listened to Latin American environmental activists detailing how  U.S, companies were befouling their countryside, or commiserating with Indian American or Pakistani American friends as they chronicled the countless times that they'd been pulled aside for 'random' searches at airports since 9/11. I felt America's defenses weakening, saw chinks in the  armor that I was sure over time made our country less safe,

That dual vision, as much as my skin color, distinguished me from previous presidents. For my supporters, it was a defining foreign  policy strength ... For my detractors, it was evidence of weakness..." (409/410 A PROMISED LAND, Barack Obama  

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

BATTLEFIELDS

 H R McMaster is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute for Peace Studies. He graduated from West Point and served thirty-four years as a career Military Officer. He retired as a four-star General with several important tours of duty as the Commanding Officer of important Battleground Commands. He holds a PhD in History from UNC and taught history at West Point. A brilliant student, McMaster studies the history of War like an Oncologist pursuing  the cure for Cancer, always in defense of his country and in the cause of lasting peace.

After thirteen months as NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER to President Donald Trump, McMaster wrote BATTLEGROUNDS and concludes his game-changing reassessment of America's place in the world with this insightful paragraph:  "As historian Zachary Shore observed, 'the greatest source of national strength is an educated populace.'  It is my hope that this book will make a small contribution to the strength of our nation and other nations of the free world. Writing it was a continuation of my own education. I will judge it to have been worthwhile if it inspires vibrant, thoughtful, and respectful discussion of how we can best defend the free world and preserve a future of peace and opportunity for generations to come.'"

McMaster writes from an a-political position; he is neither liberal nor conservative, but liberal and conservative. He writes with three objectives in mind: (1) defend and protect constitutional law as the Rule of Law; (2) defend and protect the human rights and personal civility of our Democratic Process; (3) Provide the President with multiple options with which to successfully and safely meet diplomatic or military situations from a geo-political context that considers both the geography and the politic within the context.

This reader began with a strong personal bias for peace and pacifism that is potentially anti-military (non-violence). McMaster skillfully describes six nations, or geographic regions that America faces as potential BATTLEFIELDS. I learned much from reading McMaster and seeing our diplomatic and military resources in a new and more positive historical, geo-political perspective that remains bigger than mere politics and patriotism--issues of humanity--peace, pollution, global warming et al.

McMaster offers me a rationale - a rational view that holds my peace principles, but feels patriotic pride in an America that stands for liberty and justice for all while protectings the democratic process of all humanity, despite creed, color, or culture - and remains non-violent, yet willing to defend to the death if and when necessary.

I am walkingwithwarner,blogspot,com recommending that you real BATTLEGROUNDS for yourself, as written by General H R McMaster, a Harper-Collins publication, NY, 2020.

WHERE LAW ENDS (tyranny begins)

"The final question our investigation pursued was whether the president had obstructed justice before or after our office was up and running. The facts here were no less appalling although we had not indicted the president or, frustratingly, even taken the final leap of putting a label on what the facts added up to (italics added).

Instead, our report set out numerous episodes that provided clear evidence against the president, However,we were forbidden from indicting him for these crimes (italics added), as we were employees of the Department of Justice and bound to follow an internal Department policy that no president could be indicted while in office--whether we agreed with that rule or not.

Given this idiosyncratic circumstance, Mueller had decided it would be unfair to say that we found the president had committed a crime, as Trump would not be able to challenge our conclusion in court, at least until he left office. Thus our report laid out the proof of his criminal conduct in detail (italics added), but did not give our legal assessment of it--we never said outright that he'd committed a crime. Instead, we had left it to Congress to make its own assessment of our evidence, or to another prosecutor in the future, who would be free to indict the president once he'd left office..."

(from the author's introduction to Where Law Ends; Inside the Mueller Investigation by Andrew Weissmann, Random House, NY, 2020)

This is walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com at Warner's World ...

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE COMMON GOOD?

 Michael Sandel gives is the following information in a chapter entitled RECOGNIZING WORK (published 2020). People without a college degree could find good paying jobs from World War Two into the 1970s. They could support a family comfortably and live a good middle-class life."Over the past five decades, the earnings differed between college and high school graduates--what economists call the 'college premium'--has doubled. In 1979, college graduates  made about 40 percent more than high school graduates; by the 2000s they made 80 percent more.'"

From 1979 to 2016, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United 'States fell from 19.5 million to 12 million, but productivity increased and workers reaped a smaller share of what they produced. Simultaneously, executives and shareholders captured a larger share. In the late 1970s, CEOs of major American companies made 30 times more than the average worker and by 2014, they made 300 times more. 

Per capita income increased 85 percent since 1979, yet white men without a college degree make less now than they did then. What this has been saying louder and louder is that the work of the working man is less valued by the culture than that of the man who gets an education and works with his brains. Thus, the idea has begun to say over the past several decades that the market legitimates lavish rewards winners based on the merit of their deserving to be where they are. It also says to the losers that they are responsible for where they are and deserve what they get. We now have a meritocracy based on personal responsibility and we get what we deserve and what this really means is that the winners take all and deserve their reward. Onm the other hand, it also means the losers deserve to be losers and they don't count.

What tis all really means is that we no longer have any value for the common good and we are victims of our own sorting system in which the winners take more and more and the losers receive less and less--we have reverted back to the law of the jungle that is SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST and the eventual destruction of social structure and society.

Darren Walker, President of Ford Corporation, calls Sandel's writing a seminal  work. The Tyranny of Merit detly exposes the flaws and fallacies of meritoratic philosophy and suggests Sandel makes a compelling case for uprooting inequality and building a fairer society shaped by true principles of justice, which I would suggest are found only in the Biblical faith of Christianity.

Preet Bharara, former attorney for the southern district of New York, calls it a must read and describes it as a revelatory assessment of pervasiveness unfairness in our society, driven in part by a naive and myopic reliance on the notion of merit. Over and over, we are confronted with what's become of the common good?

If you  be believe in liberty and justice for all, you will want to read Michael J, Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit, published by Farar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 2020.  This is walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com

_____

"I FORGIVE YOU''

“I kept hoping that she would regain consciousness,” lamented the EMT following the death of the victim.  “I wanted to tell her that she could see her grandson.  I wanted to tell her that I forgave her.” 

Crewmembers scrutinized the face of this former GI, a one-time Golden Glove champion, and a Twin Cities EMT.  He had the reputation of being a no-nonsense kind of guy. While fellow crewmen searched his face for some indication of a joke; they watched in silence, until they saw him stand up, turn away, and quietly mutter “that’s my mother!” 

Gary’s dad and mom divorced long ago. His alcoholic mother had turned her two young sons over to community foster care and Gary had not heard from his mother in twenty-six years.  He only met her now quite by accident, while making an emergency run searching for an accident victim. Any whispering remnants of hidden hope for a family reunion stayed locked and deeply buried in the steel vault of Gary’s hardened heart. 

Feelings festered with infection  were buried deeply and long forgotten. What might have could never be. Yet; “It was strange“ he mused; “She never called me once in the twenty-six years since I’ve been out of the military service, but in her purse she had pictures of me and some stories about me that were written when I was boxing fourteen or fifteen years ago” (Saint Paul Pioneer Press/11-18-1996).

Forgiveness is essential to the recipe of human relationships. Any recipe calling for lasting relationship requires at least  some element of forgiveness. Acts of intentional forgiveness are essential to our recipe simply because relationships by their very nature remain imperfect at best. Seldom can a relationship mature without some kind of meaningful communication  that delivers the three essential words—"I forgive you.” 

No communication will inject more meaning into a relationship than the simple, forthright confession that affirms “I forgive you.” No verbal or written  communication can convey the message in fewer words. “To err is human” concluded Alexander Pope when writing “The Eternal Now” but “to forgive is divine.” Thomas Fuller agreed, it is “the worst of men … who will not forgive.”           

Searing winds of hostility scatter storm clouds of distrust and hatred across the face of our globe. Angry attitudes, resulting from unforgiving spirits, create broken relationships and scatter them like burning embers. Such ongoing experiences forever justify our determined embrace of negative feelings while our tensions escalate and quickly sour, leaving us hostage to our infected feelings that cannot be cured without being confessed. 

No investment we make, can-or-will pay a greater dividend, or create greater peace-making skills, than to reach for a personal reconciliation. If we could but resolve our relational problems of marital discord, racial strife, and social tension, we could eventually resolve our global issues of ethnic cleansing, genocide, poverty, and peace. 

Paul, the Christian Apostle, may have known more than we give him credit for, when he exhorted his readers to “get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Eph. 4:31 NIV). As the Society of the Saints, we can neither escape nor ignore this existential imperative, without great personal risk. 

Forgiveness remains our most essential ingredient for building healthy relationships in today’s global community. Forgiveness paves the highway into the land of healthy living and builds foundations for healthy living. It mends broken fences; it heals wrecked relationships. It sustains marriages. It builds communities and injects extraordinary infusions of  wholesome living into ordinary congregations, transforming them into happy hearts, loving relationships, and healthy families. 

From  Warner’s World, this is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

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CONSCIENCE

 Conscience is thus the inner man's recognition of what is essential 

for the preservation and development of that for which constitutes 

his real life. (76/Rufus Jones/RUFUS JONES SPEAKS TO OUR 

TIME, Ed by H E Fosdick/McMillan/NY)

POWERING UP YOUR PRAYER LIFE

The first brown paper grocery bag appeared in America in 1883. By 1982 Supermarkets purchased 25 million bags yearly. That versatile paper bag endured that first century because no one found a more convenient way of carrying groceries.¹

 It has been more than two millennia since Jesus walked Palestinian paths and no one has yet improved on life as Jesus lived it. He practiced a life of prayer that that modeled positive living. He maximized life by  exercising positive faith while also exposing the false faces of bad religion.

 Jesus pronounced woe on the Pharisees for failing to discern the difference between their slick-talk and doing a photo-op walking (Mt. 23:3-7, 13). The Pharisees were experts in public promotion of faith, but they failed to discern, recognize, and reveal God (14-22, 23). When we compare their walk with their talk, they merit nothing more than a failing grade (25-33).

Meanwhile, Jesus invited his disciples to personalize their prayer lives. By modeling an effective prayer life, Jesus helped his disciples integrate internally what they experienced following him daily and this brought personal transformation. Observing Him, they learned to tap into His power source and experience personal transformation.

 Empowerment comes through Spiritual Formation. Prayer led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the empowerment he needed for coping with Adolph Hitler’s atheism. Prayer became his “supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.”

 Real prayer provides “the antithesis of self-display.” Bonhoeffer found that praying men “ceased to know themselves and know only God whom they call upon.” Rather than taking immediate aim at having a direct effect on the world, Bonhoeffer concluded prayer should be “addressed to God alone, and is therefore the perfect example of undemonstrative action.”¹

 While some pray only in late-night emergencies and on weekends--when rates are cheapest, Bonhoeffer experienced prayer as a way out of the basement of hypocrisy and dishonesty, and a means of climbing up the ladder to a higher level of character.

Renewal comes through personal Restructuring. Jesus challenged his disciples to power-up their lives. He invited them to pray as they avoided the example of the Pharisees. Prayer is much more than a Sunday suit we put on to wear for public display, but removing it  when in private. A. H. McNeile called prayer a “developing life. . .an expanding. . .a deepening. . .a heightening” and “intensifying of the whole being” McNeile found in prayer an encounter with God that offered a  private place for personal restructuring.

For the Pharisee, prayer provided a beautiful appearance for impressing observers, but it remained little more than a memorial to the dead within (Mt. 23:27). Genuine prayer peels the outer layers of one’s appearance and discards all self-justification. It meets the God who transforms our attitudes and converts our unholy habits into positive practices of justice, mercy and grace.

A Youth Pastor challenged his group to pray for missions--fifteen minutes daily. His warnings of unseen costs prompted them to wonder “What could it cost to pray?” Pointing to William Carey and David Brainerd, this committed leader noted that Carey prayed for the conversion of the world and it cost him a lifetime of service. It cost his supporters years of support--finance and prayer. Brainerd prayed for the Indians and it cost him two years of sacrifice, and his life.

Authenticity comes Through personal Discipleship. The benefits of prayer far offset the costs of prayer. When we pray, God authenticates our lives with love that enables us to love offensive neighbors and even our enemies. Without doing it for us, He fortifies, sustains and maintains our resistance. He allows for opportunities of spiritual development and growth in grace while we build additional muscle-tone, resist temptations, and endure our growing pains.

“In short,” wrote Otho Jennings, “God through the death of His Son upon the Cross has made ample provision that we should be holy; but the acceptance of free will of these provisions is the sole responsibility of men”²

While the Pharisees paraded their virtues in public, their dress suits advertised their faith to their gathered admirers. Their relationships, however, reduced others, as they refused to compromise, unwilling “to lift a finger” or ease a burden (23:4). They gave God their leftovers, but they had their reward.

Integrity is the result of a transparent life with God. Prayer played a vital role in the public and private life of both Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus made prayer personal in both his public life and his private life. In public, the Pharisees displayed pretentious oaths, well-measured gifts, and carefully-crafted photo-ops; in private they lived skin deep.

Jesus advised us to go into our rooms, close the door and meet God privately. He invited us to bare our hearts and souls and allow God to bore into the core of our being and strip off our false faces and experience true integrity that makes public prayer a corporate sharing (Mt. 6:6). Such personal encounters with God will eliminate the short-circuiting brought on by material values and gravity‘s external pull.

Prayer rises above human reasoning and earthly circumstance. Prayer lubricates life with grace. Prayer confesses the fear that causes us to shrink from new truth. Prayer overcomes that mediocrity that settles for the status quo.  Thus, we can pray: “O God of Truth; deliver me from the pride that thinks it has all the truth.”

By agreeing with God, we experience transformation and  escape the attractions of prying eyes, wagging tongues, and empty minds.

A certain prominent church installed an expensive organ, which refused to play the very first Sunday. The Pastor sent an emergency call that quickly brought the mechanic. The skillful mechanic soon found the reason for the power shortage and he forwarded this note to the organist: “After prayer the power will be on.”

Jesus connected to the power fond in prayer and invited the disciples to flip the switch, pull the stops, and play the music. Like those common grocery bags we use for carrying our groceries home from the store, we have still not found anything better for powering up our prayer lives; after all this time, we have found nothing to substitute for a life of prayer.

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1 From a 1982 news story interviewing Tim McKenna of Union Camp Corporation.

2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer,  The Cost of Discipleship. (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1^st paperback ed. 1963) p. 181.

3 Kenneth Geiger, Insights Into Holiness, vol. 2. (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1964), p. 154

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Here is how you can power up in your own life and live with God's blessing; 

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

THIS COMING ELECTION

 AMERICA IS facing the most important national election since 1860, without doubt.

Above all else, we need to remember that we are one nation indivisible, under God. We love God supremely. That calls us to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. That makes us a community--one nation under God; and that must be the filter of our political process and how we relate to one another and respect each other as individuals. When all is said and done; that is what politics is all about.

That allows us to be different in color, culture, and even creeds, but we remain a single community, indivisible, united, and cooperating together in the great human experiment of liberty and justice for all = what we call freedom; As such, we are the great American experiment, the greatest civilization since Aristotle and the Greeks were conquered by the Roman Empire.

I grew into my youthful years watching the impossible happen as people fawned over Adolph Hitler until he convinced people he was incorruptible, invincible and in some cases almost immortal. In any event, he was always right and if you did not believe him, just ask him. He could set you right.

As he convinced people more and more of his superiority, he did the impossible and established himself as the absolute authority in Germany. Soon it was Europe. Before long, the whole world was within his grasp. Then America drew the line of its constitutional freedom and shed its blood resisting the military might of The German Reich. I grew up proud to be an American and I am still proud enough that I will exercise my right as a responsible American citizen to exercise my vote.

As I watch the political right, and others, fawn over our current president and listen to my friends rationalize extending to him unlimited but unconstitutional powers, I see the same process repeating itself and I predict, almost without fear of question, that if we do not take hold of our voting booth and use our citizen's right to vote out our sitting president; we will have lost our democracy before many more decades pass by, It will not happen during my lifetime so I need not worry, but it will certainly happen in the lifetime of my grandsons and my two great grandbabies.

No man is above the Constitution (Law of the land). No man can govern America without Congressional assistance. No man can run a one-man show by the seat of his pants. Donald Trump's own administration finds itself continually scratching their collective heads and wondering how to handle this lone operator and keep the public support. Over and Over, I have heard The Donald tell us how right he is, above and beyond anyone else.

The real truth is that we all need each other. My answer is not found in a political party or in a political superman to heroically rescue us. And I explicitly reject any and all violence. My plea is that we once more seek the face of Almighty God as did Honest Abe Lincoln and confess our flawed humanity and our undisputed need to love and respect one another regardless of our color, creed, or culture.

We MUST respect one another--red and yellow, black and white, and all shades in between--to once more become one nation, indivisible, under God. Only then can God bless America. Only then will we again become the land of the brave and of the free. May God be able to bless America in this election and in the generations to follow. . .

POSTED PROPERTY

I have a small black 3-ringed notebook that contains this verse that I often used in the numerous funerals I officiated during my active years of church Ministry and following. The poem is entitled FRIENDS and it 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. 

In one of those Memorials, I laid to rest a consecrated Mother and Christian wife. She had been an inspiration to others, right down to her 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). 

Among other things that day, we remembered her 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.” 

In her experience, as in the experience of every true disciple of Christ; evening was not the prelude of mistaking sunset and darkness; rather it was the coloring of a beautiful Eternal Dawn, for her. 

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 power of memory and of friends with which God has blesses us. Of course, that still leaves us choosing how we conserve our memories and our friends, and whether we feel the pangs of guilt or the exultation of joy. That brings me to another of my friends, that being the books I read and take motivation from to feed my appetite for life. You ask what drives me at this late hour of my life; allow me to share a quote from my reading this morning. 

I quote from Richard Bell’s 2019 publication of Stolen, Five Free Boys Kidnapped into SLAVERY and THEIR ASTONISHING ODDESSEY HOME (ISBN #978-15011-6943-4). In chapter two, Bell describes what he calls BLACK HEARTS. He describes one John Smith as “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). 

We learn that Purnell was one of the very first of our nation’s “professional con men,” and that Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love was “teeming with strangers in the 1820s, and grifters seemed to be everywhere making use of “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? Does it make you wonder just how far have we really progressed in our human journey? Would you believe I have encountered hundreds of fraudulent scam artists in my online journeys and fortunately I have learned to identify them fairly well. Would you believe that we receive dozens of scam calls, via robo and otherwise, on our house phone here in Kentucky every week that goes by? It brings me to the conclusion reached by the Apostle Paul , who agreed that “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave then up to a base mind and to improper conduct” and he leaves a long list with which we are all familiar (Romans 1:31).  He then leaves 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). Paul’s list of dirty linen certainly has the approval of a huge portion of our global culture today, otherwise life as we know it would take on a far different pattern of behavior.  

The John Purnell’s are in ingrained in every strata of American society from the White House to Joliet Prison, in every ethnic color of humanity, and in every nation around our globe. I care not about your color and your culture; I do care about your creed, for that determines your behavior. We act out what we believe.  

From walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com, 

I remind 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 BIBLE SAYS 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.