NOW FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS

 4530

I have often thought about the "quality" of suffering, and how some people contend with so much of it during the course of their lives here.

And if you were to ask someone who has contended with so much for so long, I expect he or she would, in so many words, say, (to encapsulate the implication of Psalm 13),

"How long, O Lord, How Long?"

And dear friends, lest you wonder how much I know about the topic, I would immediately respond,

"Far too much."

And I am admittedly biased, but sometimes it seems I have experienced enough of this variable, and resulting emotion for ten lifetimes.

But at times like these, it helps me to consider Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 1. 

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not (yet) seen."

My friends, just as surely as this life, though visible, and tangible, is momentary, the next life, though invisible, is equally tangible, but everlasting. 

I love the encouragement which Hebrews 8:18 affords us:

"For I reckon the suffering of this present time is not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us."

This is simply not all there is! 

I attended a series of meetings at a large church over half a century ago. The young evangelist had a tendency, when he got "wound up" to kick his right leg, as if he were punting a football.

At the end of the week long series of meetings, those in attendance were encouraged to line up, and greet "Brother Brown."

As I stepped up to the evangelist, he smiled, stretched out his hand, took mine, looked directly in my eyes, and said,

"Stay encouraged."

I have no way of knowing if this particular preacher is still with us, but I have never forgotten his words, and I have passed them on to countless others who God has set in my pathway; sometimes placing my hand on their heads as I did so. 

No, my friend, this is not all there is. Stay encouraged!

"But day by day, and as long as today shall last continue to encourage one another." (Hebrews 3:13)

by Bill McDonald, PhD 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: MY GRANDMOTHER'S SACRIFICE

 4529

My quadruple Great Grandparents Thomas and Susannah (Harrington) Hightower were living on the Tygar River near Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1780. Having heard the plea for additional manpower, Thomas joined Colonel Benjamin Roebuck’s Colonial Regiment. While he was away on military duty, a militia group referred to as Tories, those American colonists loyal to the King of England, stormed the Hightower homestead and burst into my ancient grandmother’s house.

Following is an account I have written based on the events of that evening:

Susannah had been helping her son, John, with a particularly long word from his reader, and content that he had mastered one page and moved on to the next, she sat down in her rocking chair by the fire.

Suddenly the front wooden door flew open. Even in the midst of this terrible war, custom won out and she had forgotten to lock the door. Standing before her were eight heavily armed men, wearing an all-too familiar, but hated uniform. Susannah screamed for the children to run to the cellar. She realized that this rude intrusion was certainly no courtesy call.

Grandmother Hightower immediately recognized the leader of this band of traitors to the cause of independence. Bill Cunningham was an unusually handsome man, but known far and wide for his viciousness and unyielding retribution. It was not for no reason he had been nicknamed “Bloody Bill,” a name he apparently relished.

When the major addressed her by name, Susannah felt a shiver creep slowly up her spine, and she felt faint.

“Mrs. Hightower. You needn’t be afraid. We’re not here to hurt you. Answer a question, and we’ll be on our way, and leave you and your children alone.”

Somehow Susannah doubted the sincerity of his words.

“I know your husband has joined that vagabond band of misfits who are determined to put an end to everything we hold dear in these colonies. Well, Ma’am, we’re not going to let that happen.”

My grandmother started to speak,

“Sir, I protest…”

Bloody Bill cut her off.

“You’re not in the position to protest anything. Sit back down! NOW!”

My brave, but equally wise grandmother dropped into the rocking chair, suddenly feeling as weak as water.

“There now. That’s good. May I call you, Susannah?”

And without waiting for a reply, he continued.

“Susannah, I need you to answer me one question. Where’s your husband?”

And contrary to his earlier promise, he asked another question.

“Cat got your tongue? Where’s your husband, and who is his commanding officer?”

Susannah cleared her throat and fear registered in her voice.

“Sir, I know who you are. And I know you’re up to no good. I have no intention whatsoever, in telling you where my husband is.”

Bloody Bill’s contemptuous smile now turned downwards in a frown, and then a scowl. He would not be manipulated by the likes of a frail, little woman.

“One more chance, ma dear… if you want to live.”

Susannah realized the stakes of this not so pleasant game, and she steeled herself for the inevitable.

In a voice just above a whisper, and with tears stinging her eyes now, she sealed her fate.

“I cannot… I cannot bring myself to tell you. I have been true to my husband these twenty years. I am not about to betray him now. Do what you want, but you’ll get no answer from me.”

Well, my friends. I would like to tell you that Bloody Bill

Cunningham marched right out of there, and took his band of “n’er do wells” with him… He didn’t. Turning to his chief lieutenant, he screamed,

“I’ll have none of this. No Sir, I will not. Lieutenant Morrison, kill her! Do it now!”

A look of utter amazement possessed the officer. He reached for his sword, but his hand seemed frozen in mid-air. Bloody Bill was not used to having his orders delayed, and he jerked Morrison’s sword out of the scabbard, and raised it high above his head.

My ancient grandmother had only enough time to utter the few last words she would ever speak on this side of eternity. With arms wrapped tightly about herself, she closed her eyes, and bowed her head.

“God forgive you, Bloody Bill. Dear Lord receive my spirit.”

…And the deed was done.

And I hasten to remind you that this is but one story among multiplied thousands of similar stories, which include the ancestors of those assembled here today, and which have followed us throughout all our nation’s wars.

by Bill McDonald, PhD

**Another version of this story indicates my 4x great Grandmother was ordered to stand on a stump, and she was riddled with bullets.

NEXT

 4528

I retired from my counseling practice two weeks ago.

Over the course of 35 years, I literally met with thousands of men, women, boys and girls; perhaps as many as 4,000 - 5,000 total.

There were any number of variables involved in the significant number of people with whom I have counseled. 

The youngest person I ever "met with" was 11 or 12; (as I never considered myself an elementary age counselor). The oldest person I ever met with was 85. The number of people over 60 I ever counseled with was no more than 8 or 10 max. 99.9 percent of my clients were Caucasian. I counseled approximately 15-20 Spanish people. I counseled a grand total of 2 black, and 2 Jewish clients.

I have encountered every conceivable counseling issue. Marital, financial, sexual, vocational, emotional. (All those issues which end with the suffix "al"). My least favorite counseling topics involved substance abuse, and grief. Speaking of "grief", like many long-time counselors, I "lost" a couple of clients.

Of course, a counselor counsels "whatever walks in his door." We are not in the business of soliciting clients. (They knock on our doors, not vice versa, and we generally counsel whoever does the knocking).

It will be strange not doing extensive session planning on a weekly basis. It will seem odd not "jumping ready" twice a week, and driving to one of my two offices; 7 minutes separating the two locations.

And as I began my little thesis, above, all this has come to a conclusion now, and I am left with the results; be they good, or the lack thereof. (However, I am convinced that I made a significant difference in a myriad of lives).

Post-script

Now, I find myself bereft of a formal ministry, and the wherewithal to impact lives.

Oh, perhaps I just misspoke. I have been placing Christian tracts on random store shelves when I shop, and I often hand out small New Testaments to store clerks, and others I meet along the way. 

And I often encourage people whom I interact with on social media. (I once had the privilege of sharing the written word with a young lady in war-torn Ukraine. Later, she told me how much my words meant to her, and buoyed her spirits, as she sat in a bomb shelter, and munitions rained down around her).

While I don't want to downplay the things with which I am currently involved, I am convinced there will be a "next," something I can do on a regular basis to make a difference among those who God sets in my pathway.

There has always been a "next," and I believe God has a next for all of those who have invested their faith in Him; throughout the times and stages of their lives.

by Bill McDonald, PhD 

THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE

 4527

As I write these words I just completed 33 years of counseling practice, and have been retired all of 16 hours. 

As the doors locked behind me, and I walked to the car yesterday I said aloud,

"That's all she wrote!"

And as I unlocked my car door, and sat down in the driver's seat, I said,

"The office is closed."

Funny, I previously retired from the Army Reserve, and "The Tightest Ship in the Shipping Business," but somehow this time is different. I will no longer have the wherewithal to make a difference in lives in the exact same way I have done over the past three plus decades of my life.

Nonetheless, I am convinced that God is not through with me yet, and that He will continue to use me in the way which He dreamed for me before He flung the worlds and stars into space.

That is a comforting thought.

by Bill McDonald, PhD

WALKING INTO THE FIRE

 4526

There is a moment in every fire rescue account that investigators, firefighters, and first responders describe the same way.

The moment a parent stops calculating and simply moves.

No training. No equipment. No plan beyond the only one that matters: my children are in there.

It happens in seconds. And in those seconds, something takes over that has no clinical name and no rational explanation — only a direction. Back into the fire.

The house is filling with smoke before she is fully awake. The stairs are still passable. She goes up.

She goes into the first room. She carries the child down. She goes back up.

The smoke is thicker now. The heat is building at the ceiling, the way fire always does — dropping lower, inch by inch, closing the window of survival. She goes into the second room.

Down again. Up again.

This is not courage in the way we usually describe it — the resolved, conscious decision to do something brave. This is something older and less complicated. It is the reason human children survive at all. It is the reason the species made it this far.

She goes back in until there is no one left to go back for.

What she carries out of that house are her children. What she leaves in it, in varying degrees across documented cases from Pennsylvania to Coventry to Stockholm, is her skin, her lungs, her months of consciousness, and in some cases very nearly her life.

The recovery is never the story we tell. It is the longest part, and the hardest, and we rarely photograph it.

The surgeries. The skin grafts. The pain management. The slow negotiation with a body that has been to the edge of what bodies can survive. The physical therapy that teaches hands to grip again. The breathing exercises.

And somewhere in those months of recovery, in a hospital bed surrounded by machines, the first clear question:

Are they okay?

Not: what happened to me. Not: will I recover. Not: how long have I been here.

Are they okay.

Documented cases of severe burn survivors who entered fires to save their children share this detail with a consistency that stops being coincidence. The first coherent thought, in case after case, goes outward. Not inward.

Firefighters and burn specialists who work with these patients describe it as one of the most humbling things they witness professionally. The body has just survived something almost unsurvivable. The mind's first movement is toward someone else.

We give these women awards. We name them heroes of the year, give them commendations, invite them to ceremonies. And they accept, graciously, and say the same thing in a hundred different ways:

I only did what any mother would do.

Which is both entirely true and entirely insufficient as a description of what they actually did.

Because not everyone goes back in. Not everyone can. The smoke and the heat and the collapsing structure defeat people every day — people who love their children just as completely and are simply stopped by the physical reality of what fire does to human bodies and human courage.

What these women did was not ordinary. Calling it ordinary is its own kind of erasure.

What they did was walk back through a door that their every survival instinct was screaming to stay away from — and do it again, and again, until the job was finished.

That is not just love.

That is love as the most extreme physical act a human body can perform.

The burns heal, slowly, imperfectly, across years of surgeries and recoveries we don't film.

The children grow up.

And somewhere in the growing up, they learn what happened on the night they were carried out of a burning house by the same hands that had always carried them.

And they understand, for the first time, what it cost.

(from a social media article)

911: A PERSONAL "ALMOST"

 4525

I was living in Stafford County Virginia in 1973-1975, a rural area about 50 miles from Washington, D.C. and 50 miles from Richmond, VA.

 

During that time period I procured a job position with the U.S. Army Civil Service, Army Records Center, Alexandria, VA which was located about 10-12 miles from Washington, D.C. However, a couple months prior to beginning that job, I took a Civil Service exam at the Pentagon, passed it, and was offered a position with the U.S. Air Force Civil Service, Finance Division inside this massive five-sided building; just across the Potomac River from our nation's capital city.

 

The more I thought about driving 50 miles and over an hour to the Pentagon (and back) five days a week, the more I was inclined against it. After wrestling with the idea for a couple of days, I contacted my potential employer, and declined the position.

I was living in central Florida on that fateful day, and saw it all (literally) go down; (courtesy of whatever morning show which was being broadcast on TV)

 

However, it occurred to me at that time that, had I accepted the position at the Pentagon, and liked the job, I might have easily continued to work there for two and a half decades.

 

Had I done so, I could have conceivably been one of the 184, (185 including me), victims of Flight 77 which slammed into the outer ring of the Pentagon at 9:37am on September 11th, 2001. An astonishing 2,977, (2,978 including me), men, women and children who died at four locations during the course of 1 hour and 17 minutes on that terrible day; that, like Pearl Harbor, "will go down in infamy."

Just a reflection of a potential personal "almost” that thankfully did not include me.

 

by Bill McDonald, PhD

 

WHEN YOUR DREAMS TURN TO DUST

 4524

"For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish?'"

 (Luke 14:28-30, NKJV)

One of my dreams just turned to dust. I had prayed, I had prepared, I had "jumped through all the hoops," I had cooperated with God in the effort to bring it to fruition. 

That little quoted, little used scripture passage with which I began my blog has a great deal to convey. It reminds me so much of the process which I followed... before my dream turned to dust. As I reflect on it now, I simply did not count the cost before I laid the foundation. And now, I simply don't have the resources and energy with which to finish it.

One major obstacle is my age. I am "a frog's whisker" away from the age of 80. That grand and glorious dream for which I prayed requires a great deal of time, and effort on my part, and I realize now that I am simply not equipped to devote that much time and effort at this stage in my life. 

Oh, the dream for which I had prayed seemed "ripe for the picking" during the past several months, and after having devoted so much time and energy and prayer for such a long time, it just seemed to be "for just such a time as this." It was just so obvious. As a result, I proceeded.

It simply did not count the cost.

Of course, it would be natural to feel sorry for myself. At the very least, I am embarrassed since I have shared the "good news" with dozens of people. (I can only hope that the majority just "go about their business," and don't think any more about it). 

It is a real "poke in the eye" to realize that, "Well, no, you simply are not equipped to move forward with this venture." At first, I tried to ignore that little voice in my head. But it only got louder. Reason was determined to win out. (And it finally did).

It is a dream that I will, for all I know, take to the grave with me. They say the saddest words in the English language are: "What might have been." And given the place I find myself at this  moment, I tend to agree with that conjecture.

I have read that the richest piece of ground on earth is not the rain forests of South America, nor the diamond mines of South Africa, nor the oil wells of Saudi Arabia. No, the richest piece of ground on earth is... your local cemetery. 

For you see lying dormant in the bosoms of a thousand individuals are dreams, dreams which might have changed the world, but which will lie there for a million years; unaccomplished and unachieved.

I'm not so sure my dream would have changed the world, nor even my little nook of the world. But it meant the world to me.

Since I am a believer, I can only surmise that I got ahead of God in this matter. Perhaps there were subtle signs that our Lord was saying "No," while I was drowning Him out with my "Yes." I can only speak to the surety, the reality, the definiteness of the moment in which I find myself. His "No" is quickly becoming all too obvious. 

My dream has turned to dust.

But I will go on. I will continue to dream. Several of my dreams have been "for just such a time as this." God and I have gotten so many things right over the years. I refuse to wallow in this present pile of dust and ashes.

Perhaps one day I may even look back on this dream which has been permanently consigned to theory

... and smile.

by Bill McDonald, PhD