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.  

A Week Without Facebook

I must have appeared on Facebook for at least a dozen years;  I think I enrolled there with my kitway@sbgcglobal.net url about 2008 and more than a thousand friends ago. I was reluctant to enroll on Facebook and slow to respond but once I picked up a few friends, I was off for the races. During that time, I relocated from Michigan to Kentucky; I became a widower; and, I turned to Facebook more and more, only to find more than a thousand friends.

Perhaps I should tell part of that story.  While motoring along posting occasional devotional piece and blogging other materials from my extensive file system, I receive an inquiry from Olga in Russia about information on D. S. Warner. That really intrigued me. I discovered Olga was of German descent and born in Kazakhstan to a mixed marriage. She wrote me from Russia. I already had a missionary friend in St Petersburg, Russia and was greatly interested in fostering better relations between the U.S. and Russia,but this is a whole other story.

It goes back to the seventies at Grand Junction, MI camp meeting and my Michigan roots where I had German friends with WWII experiences in Russia. I learned that Olga had some American education and had been in America. She was the only English-educated member of a German colony of D. S. Warner followers from Astana, Kazakhstan. I learned there was a longstanding Church of God camp meeting there, frequently attended by members of our German Church of God in Canada where my friend Kurt Pudel lives.

In meeting some of Kurt's friends, I learned they included people who had been to Astana. I also found a friendship with a young Kazak bible school student, now the married pastor of an independent church somewhere in that region. I disovered Olga belonged to a small  colony of independent Church of God Germans who had migrated north from  Astana to a small farm community not two hundred miles west of Moscow, a trip of 1700 miles.

There, they established a small farm colony. If I remember, they built a dairy farm and a cheese factory. Making farm products and employing local Russians, they revitalized this dying village into a viable community. Here, they they live and work among the Russians whom they wish to evangelize via camp meetings, occasional religious efforts, and online digital publications, utilizing early publications from the Gospel Trumpet.

For a time, I corresponded with their leader, Pastor Andre. I tried to connect them to Anderson, Indiana and our national leadership but had little success with that. I think we found it difficult to  understand each other with our cultural differences and not being able to converse face to face. He seemed like a good brother. Olga married Pastor Andre and is his chief translator and I still ontact her occasionally and will continue to do so.

,
With time, I connected with Sara Nongbet in Shillong. a much respected friend, and with numerous other Meghalayans. I became obcessed with the story of J.M. Roy, a cohort of John AD Khan, but best known to the American church as J M Nichols-Roy.

I had long known of Nichols-Roy, the Indian friend of Khan, and their founding of the  Church of God mission in India. I did not understand the occasional cultural conflict between them and the Anderson Missionary Board,  Today I understand that Khan and Roy founded our India Missions in India proper and also in Assam and to  the Northeast (Assam and the Bengali area). I also understand today that JM Nichols-Roy founded our Church of God in Meghalaya/Assam and it is a freestanding indigenous church today that is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. It has had a free-standing relationship with The Church of God, Anderson, IN since 1973 when one of their young pastors came to America, preached at Anderson camp meeting, graduated from Anderson School of Theology, and returned to lead the church back home. This is a whole story in itself and is well reviewed by their Historian.

While this was all unfolding on my Facebook account, I continued friending in Africa, where I now have friends in Nigeria and East Africa. There is Noel Barumwete a young married housewife and mother who serves her 100+member church constituency in the Congo. She accepted her position after being duly elected (the first female in a male dominated culture) after the male leadership had colluded with the government and defrauded the church of much of their infrastructure, leaving many congregations meeting in the open air.

I have made numerous friends in Uganda, young men like Fred Kwewago, a young pastor who lives in or near Jinja. I have learned much about our Church of God global work through men like Solomon Shihundu and Gilbert Barasa (and Nyokabe) in Kenya; Administrater Emmanuel in Milawi, and missionary Stevenson's of Uganda et al.

This is not to omit friends in the Philippines, and elsewhere. Through Philippine friends like Edwin Epal and Eddie Viray, I have gained entry to SE Asia and connected with individuals like German Missionary Andre Makel who is building a bible college in SE Asia. Andre and I discuss our early pioneers often, but there are other friends in this global network. Friends like Don Armstrong are deeply appreciated for their work with our Global missions.

I must say, dear friends all, I am missing you greatly while I am off o f Facebook. I only hope I can get reconnected with both Facebook and with every one of you.  After nine decades of thinking differently, I no longer think of myself  as being such a solitary and introspective person. YOU are constantly in my prayers. We have a meaningful message of a personal relationship with a Risen Savior . As John Wesley pointed out so often; this relationship was best described by Jesus himself as a two-step summary of the Law and the Gospel: love God supremely; love your neighbor as yourself.

If we could do this globally, we could once more return to a humanity that thinks more of friending one another than fighting one another, as our current autocratic President seems prone to do. Stay safe and well dear friends. Keep your distance. Practice good health measures and be blessed as you walk in the sunlight of truth.

This is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com