Tiny Devotional for Monday, 09/28/2020 and Intro & Explanation

 A great good morning to my friends and neighbors out there in Internet Land! And, to those family members who have stumbled upon this post, my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, and I have been talking seriously about what form a family reunion would take for us; stay tuned.

What IS this? (the introduction and explanation) (ALSO what makes THIS post not tiny!)

First, for those ever patient authors who have waited a year or more for me to review, this is NOT, I repeat NOT, a replacement for my book reviews. It is an added-value writing; a feature, and not a Volkswagen. The book reviews will continue, and barring unforeseen circumstances, I will post one today.

Second, Vanessa and I have asked for some additional training and discipleship opportunities at church. I could go into pages, attempting to answer the 'why' and 'why now' questions, but consider this: we have a combined 80 (that's EIGHTY) years of parenting between us; and in three years, Kenneth graduates from high school, and in four years Alicia Ann graduates from high school. Whatever form their life takes after that, it will be as independent adults and NOT dependent children. 

That will be true, whether they are living in this house or not. We have had SEVEN of our adult children live here for some amount of time after becoming adults, what with one thing or another, and our responsibility to them has only been to provide a place to stay. If K and/or AA become commuter students/workers after graduation, we aren't going to kick them out, but we are going to no longer be responsible for them.

SO: Having completed our Priority THREE at that point, what do we plan on doing next? I think we are NOT going to take on a NEW Priority; I think we are going to spend the resources now allocated to Parenting to Priorities One and Two. And what. you may ask, are these?

Priority ONE is: Breathe in and out. Eat food. Drink water. Continue to live, and live in such a way that we will live long and enjoy being two-united-into-one.

Priority TWO is: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Actually, this is probably Priority ONE, since we believe that this will continue after we finish processing oxygen, but they are rather inextricable at this point in our lives, so with no disrespect intended, I'm going to leave this as Priority TWO. In the belief that we need to be adequately prepared before the day Priority THREE ends, we asked for the additional training. And, until I hear otherwise, I'm going to be writing a SHORT daily devotional as part of that. 

HERE COMES THE DEVOTIONAL PART:

A poor man who oppresses the lowly
Is like a driving rain which leaves no food.
(Proverbs 28:3, NASB)

 

Crops destroyed by rain in Telangana, India

Being poor doesn't equate to holiness. This is perfectly obvious if you actually are involved with poor people. Some of them are wonderful people, with open hearts; some of them are mean, wretched, spiteful, straight-razor toting people, like Polk Salad Annie's mama. 

In some places it's called "poke sallet," but I cite the 1967 song by the late Tony Joe White.

HOWEVER: I confess  that there was a time, 1977-1981, when I was 24 - 28 years old, that I confused poverty with righteousness, and possessions with wickedness. (The roots went back to my first year at a liberal-arts college in 1971-72.) The angst of being able to buy two sets of clothes, and my thought that having zero material goods would produce holiness, clobbered me.  Poverty was The Way, I thought.

I was just studying the wrong things: liberation theology and Bultmann. If I had spent 20 minutes each morning, just reading the Proverb of the Day, and allowed it to speak to me, I would have seen that there were special things that the poor had to be on guard against, just as the rich did. When the heart is wrong, whether you are rich or poor, destruction follows.

The wisdom is there for us to find, and apply to our lives.

Peace be on your household.





 


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