Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

 A great good afternoon to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, Tre, Nyle, and Divine are here for a visit. Open your mouth for the people who cannot speak, For the rights of all the unfortunate. Proverbs 31:8, NASB I think the primary message of Proverbs, maybe the entire Bible, is contained in this verse. When I was a little boy, I thought the primary message was  “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”  Not everybody thought that; the girl across the street said the message was that God could strike me dead. She was emphatic. From classes at church, I understood the primary message to be  God started it;  We messed it up;  He sent us some miracles;  Jesus was the way;  Be good or go to Hell.  That’s condensed, but I don’t THINK I’m leaving anything out. Today, I think the great message of the Book of Proverbs, and the core of ALL of the Bible is this:  There are pe...

 A great good afternoon to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, leftover pizza = MAGNIFICENCE! Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Proverbs 30:5, NASB I'm Scottish; do I need a shield?   In the army, they taught me ways to keep from getting shot: Concealment: they can’t see me, even if they know I’m there.  Camouflage: they can see me, but I look like something they don’t want to shoot..  Cover: they can’t hit me, even if they shoot.  A shield provides cover, keeping you from being shot. Today, nobody is shooting at me; that doesn’t mean I’m immune to attack. Neither are you. But, since it’s not bullets, what form do the attacks take? What kind of defense is appropriate? When I was under attack at my job, concealment and camouflage would have been the right tactics. Just stay low profile, pretend to cooperate, avoid hassle. I didn’t do that, of course. When I was unemploy...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, ham and cheese omelet, with salsa.  The king gives stability to the land by justice, But a person who takes bribes ruins it. Proverbs 29:4, NASB In the US, there are laws forbidding bribes to officials, and severe sanctions for violators. This is not the case elsewhere; two of my (many) drop-dead-gorgeous daughters experienced this personally, when they visited another continent. Their car was stopped by the police, until the driver  paid the correct bribe amount. How did he know the correct amount? He asked the cop, “What do you want?” Low-level bribery might exist there, but high-level bribery couldn’t happen here, right? Wrong. In my lifetime, a sitting Vice-President resigned when it was discovered he had taken kickbacks while in office.  Never happen again, right? Wrong. Consulting/speaking fees; book deals; corporate directorships: these are all LEGAL wa...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, keep a sweater in the car. Better is open rebuke Than love that is concealed. Proverbs 27:5, NASB Painful, but still better than concealed love! As my nearly-17-year-old Kenneth was leaving for school a moment ago, I quoted this verse to him, WITHOUT providing a context. So, unlike you, Kenneth didn’t know this verse is the one that came next in my daily devotional. He just knows Papa Pat said it as he was walking out the door. I imagine he thinks: Why is Papa Pat quoting the Bible to me?  Did I do something wrong?  Is he crazy? So: does he mentally file this incident under Open Rebuke, or under Concealed Love? Which makes me wonder:  How much of what I do as a father makes sense to my kids, and Is making sense a worthwhile goal? Today’s verse answers the last question with: YES! First of all, “open rebuke” is not advocated here! The Bible is pretty clear that...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits; croissants, too, if you prefer. Like one who binds a stone in a sling, So is one who gives honor to a fool. Proverbs 268, NASB > I pity the fool There is a widely held belief that if you treat a fool with love and compassion, they will be fixed. This contrasts with the even-more-widely-held belief that if you snatch a fool bald-headed, they will stop bothering you. I ascribe to both philosophies, with limits; they AREN’T incompatible. It just depends on what “love and compassion” means. Do you understand that binding a stone in a sling makes it useless? It’s no good, even as a training device, because knowing when to release the stone is the key to proficiency; if the stone is bound to the sling, it can’t be released. And giving honor to a fool is useless as well.  But what if a fool DESERVES honor? It’s been known to happen, that f...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, it’s just Monday ; we will be okay. Take away the impurities from the silver, And there comes out a vessel for the smith; Take away the wicked before the king, And his throne will be established in righteousness. Proverbs 25:4-5, NASB I know a tiny bit about purifying metals (not silver, but the principles are the same), some about bosses, and not much about heads of state. I’m going to use the term “boss” instead of king (not kings, but MAYBE the principles are the same). As always, YMMV. Simplified version: Apply enough heat to metal, and some impurities get burned off, while others will float to the top (or bottom), where they can be removed. If we apply metaphorical heat to the boss, will the wicked depart?  Wait: which wicked are we speaking of? I’ve seen at least four crisis/scandals in the White House, and in NO case was there anyone involved who could appropria...

 A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, don’t leave the chips open. Wisdom is too exalted for a fool, He does not open his mouth at the gate. Proverbs 24:7, NASB I don’t know if this is written ironically, or if it describes a system that actually worked. It could go either way. To illustrate, let’s play THEN-and-NOW; ‘THEN’ is the time the proverbs were collected, around 700 BC. THEN: those with some time that could be called “leisure” are rare. Most folks have to work ALL the time, mostly in agriculture, because that’s what it takes for a community to exist. Mostly, those free of dawn-to-dusk manual labor every day are people with wealth, the aged, and a few specialized professions.   NOW: people with leisure time = almost everyone, at least in western civilizations. The standard work load is 8 hours per day, 5 days per week.  THEN: all communication is face to face, with some supplements...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, thaw your frozen breakfast before you eat it. Apply your heart to discipline, And your ears to words of knowledge. Proverbs 23:12, NASB Writers of the Bible were perfectly capable of putting sequential commands in the right sequence: “First, do this, THEN do that.”  I don’t want to beat this idea to death, but you’ll find LOTS of references to setting priorities in words like “before, first, after, then,” and so on.   I bring this up, because this verse does NOT mandate, or even imply, a sequence. The linking word between the two actions is “and.” I suggest that’s because we are to take both actions at the same time. Applying our hearts to discipline absolutely requires doing something. The heart provides the MOTIVATION to act; the discipline describes the nature of the act. In writing this blog post, I am applying my heart to discipline. AND, while we are DOI...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, let us be thankful for breakfast. The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave. Proverbs 22:7, NASB I don’t like hard words, but all the wisdom I have on this verse comes from hard experience. Chattel slavery was outlawed in the US, although the repercussions are still with us. Meanwhile, aspects of debt slavery seem to be expanding in our country, and I don’t see an end to it. (Mortgages and student loans need a separate treatment.) Here’s how I became a debt slave: I got my first student-account credit card with a $300 limit in 1978. That was used to buy things to eat, drink, or fuel my car; when catastrophic items, like a broken transmission, came along, I applied for a different card. Before the credit card ride was over (DECADES later), that single card with a $300 limit had become eight(?) cards with $5000 limits, with too many of them max...

 A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, thanks for encouraging me. I'm better than you are. Haughty eyes and a proud heart, The lamp of the wicked, is sin. Proverbs 21:4, NASB This is one of the times when I regret not applying myself more fully to my language studies, because I’m not sure I get what this verse means to communicate. “The lamp of the wicked?” When I encounter a difficult verse in NASB, I go to other translations to see if they are clearer. In the case of this verse, the NIV translates the second line as “the unplowed field of the wicked.” No help there. The only Hebrew text I could easily access, translates as “The eye of the wicked and the open heart of the wicked is a sin offering.” Again, no help for me. Jesus said the eye is the lamp of the body. That makes for a worthwhile study, but I’m going to stop RIGHT HERE. I think I get the main point of the proverb, which is:  TO the wicked,...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, sausage-pancake, on a stick. Staying in touch Many will seek the favor of a generous person, And every person is a friend to him who gives gifts. All the brothers of a poor person hate him; How much more do his friends abandon him! He pursues them with words, but they are gone. Proverbs 19:6-7, NASB The rich and the poor both understand that money attracts, and poverty repels; but money isn’t the whole story. The words describing the conflict are: favor, friend, brothers, hate, abandon.  Those aren’t “money” words; they are relationship words.  I once overheard a father complain that his daughter, who lived in a different state, only contacted him when she needed money.  Even though I was just a kid at the time, I realized that his problem wasn’t money; it was that he desired a closer relationship.  If he had said what was really on his heart, it would pr...

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, join me in thanking Pastor John Hutchins for his encouragement.  Help! I'm being repressed! A fool’s lips bring strife,  And his mouth invites beatings. Proverbs 18:6, NASB  Anybody can mis-speak. Mama said: your tongue gets tangled around your eyeteeth, and you can’t see what you’re saying. It HAPPENS.  Usually, a wrong statement is ignored; sometimes, it requires a clarification. I’ve never seen a case where a single wrong statement resulted in a punch, unless there was pre-existing malice (as in, someone was spoiling for a fight). While there is a specific case of what the legal system refers to as “fighting words,” in which a spoken word has the moral equivalent of a blow, under normal circumstances, with normal people, the only thing that words invite is: more words. We call that conversation, dialogue, communication.   But then, we come to...