Onis Smith 101 (24 Dec 1910-3 Feb 2012)

My step-father, Onis Smith, crossed over Jordan a little over a week ago. We buried him beside his first wife at the beautiful Maplewood cemetery in his beloved Harrison, Arkansas  (he moved to Little Rock for his last quarter-century).

Onis was not only a believer but a devoted and godly man, was very good to my mother the thirteen years he was married to her, and gave of himself totally and freely to his “lately-adopted” family—including me and my family. God be praised for his long and rich and abundantly blessed life. Extremely joyful for his home-going, I am going to miss him deeply.

Over a century old, Onis was truly an amazing man in so many ways. He could play the harmonica—and well—to the end of his life (he could also play the guitar, but eventually his fingers would no longer cooperate). He had the “Midas touch” with plants: they didn’t turn to gold exactly—rather everything he touched turned green! When people use the term “master gardener,” they are talking about Onis. He also knew the Bible inside and out—because he had read and loved and taught and believed and obeyed it to the best of his knowledge all of his long life.

He was among the first electricians in northern Arkansas. He was bringing electricity to businesses and homes throughout northern Arkansas before he even had it at his own house! And three quarters of a century later he still knew as much as (if not more than) the “professionals” of our own day. He always loved to tell the story of how in his forties he was “killed” when he was electrocuted and blown from a utility pole, only to be brought back to life when he struck the pavement below. (He also broke his back in four places and was told he would never walk again—into his nineties he walked at least two miles a day. He was walking six until his doctor told him he was wearing out his joints!)

Among other things, Onis took Latin in high school (he was among the first high school graduates in his area). As he neared the century mark, his mind occasionally got fuzzy on a few things, but he could still say his “amo, amas, amat,” and he could sing “America the Beautiful” entirely in Latin! One more reminder that the things our children are learning today will be with them throughout all their lives and will make of them much of who they are. God guide us wisely as we govern over so much of the input that will shape them—and, to one degree or another, the generations to follow. 

Thanks be to God for all the lessons Onis learned and passed along. I will never be the same for the influence he had on me--all of which was packed neatly into the final decade of his life. I pray I will not only live as long but as well for as long, and I pray the final ten of my life will be as productive and life-giving and inspiring.

Psalm 19: The Meditation of My Heart

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.

In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them Your servant is warned,
And in keeping them there is great reward.

Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.

Good Seed, Good Soil, Good Fruit

“But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. . . . But these are . . . those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.” (Mark 4:8, 20)

Nothing beats rich, loamy dirt, horse-manured, compost-fed, and broken-up two feet deep. Well-watered and well-drained, warmed by the sun and comforted by a blanket of mulch to hold moisture down and weeds at bay, such soil is a seed-bed for wonderful things. Wonderful fruit-bearing things.

Like apricot trees and watermelon vines, nine-foot-long tomato “trees” and elephant-ear summer squash. Things like okra spears thrust into the sky and gigantic jewel-drops hanging from the eggplant plants. Wonderful things like grapevines filled with bright and juicy reds ready to explode with flavor, green beans poled and granny smith apples stretching a tree’s limits. It all begins with good soil.

Christ makes it clear: Where the Spirit and the Word of God are, there is such a thing as “good soil,” and there is such a thing as “good fruit.” There may be variations in quantity from vine to vine or branch to branch, but good soil results in good fruit. When the fruit is poor or non-existent, check soil conditions.

What makes for good soil? Not only ears that hear but hearts that receive the Word of God for the truth, law, and promise that it is. Not only lips that confess but hearts that embrace and love and obey. Pray for such hearts, long for them, work for them, and use the organic material of the Word of God to enrich them. Such hearts are tilled and turned over, clods broken up, stones cast out. Such hearts are made soft over time and with experience rather than hardened and left fallow through disuse (or misuse). Such good hearts receive the Word of God and produce.

What is the fruit? The apostle Paul gives us this list as representative: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Those who are full of the Spirit are full of these things, and those who are full of the Spirit are drinking from the well of living water the Spirit has authored, that is, the Holy God-breathed Scriptures. Pray for this fruit as well, look for it, hope for it, long for it. Pray for a never-ending supply of love for God and love for others. Pray for God-given peace externally (between you and others) and internally (in your own breast). Pray for increasing crops—the hundredfold variety—of charity and goodness and purity and faith. Pray for the blessed fruit of patience produced by trials, itself producing perfections and completeness. But in all your prayers remember these things spring only from the seed of God’s Word planted in the receptive soil of the heart.

“God, grant us such fertile hearts as receive Your Word and find it growing healthy, fruit-bearing vines that extend to every corner of our lives. Fill us with Your Spirit, and by Your Word produce within us the fruit of the Spirit, dropping from our branches and lying all about us on the ground. Give us ears to hear, hearts that accept, lives that bear fruit—hundredfold—we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”

Thorny-vines

“And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. . . . Now these are the ones . . . who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” (Mark 4:7, 18, 19)

Weeding is a reality in life. If you want tomatoes and squash and beans and okra and any other good thing, pulling up the other stuff—the grass, the weeds, the thorny vines—has to happen. If you want a nice lawn, something has to be done about that ragweed, those thistles and briars. Leave a garden untended, and the wilderness will take over in no time and with no help from you.

Such is life for the Christian. It may be true the tares and wheat grow up together, i.e., the wicked and the righteous are left to share space in the world; but this cannot be true of our hearts. There is a garden that must be kept weed-free. There is no place there for anything other than that which bears the fruit from the seed of God’s Word.

Three things are specifically pointed out by our Lord, three varieties of thornies. First is mentioned “the cares of this world,” which cares we all know all too well. These must be replaced by or transformed into the cares of the kingdom of God. It is not that we are not to care about things, as if the Christian life were simply a “don’t worry, be happy,” laissez-faire sort of affair. We have plenty to care for—lots of healthy, fruit-bearing, life-enriching plants that need watering, nourishing, guiding, encouraging, pruning, and so forth. But the cares of this world are cares for things other than what God cares for, things that distract us from the work of the garden-kingdom rather than promoting it.

The second thorny-vine mentioned is “the deceitfulness of riches,” which is a major theme in Christ’s teaching, the rest of the New Testament, and throughout Scripture. God knows, even if we are slow to admit, money and the love of money and the lust for money—the hope and belief that more money will answer our deepest longings in life—drives a big chunk of what goes on in the world and what goes on in our lives. But such a belief and hope is deceitful, a bald-faced lie. It bears no fruit but chokes the life out of true life and leaves us bare and broken and empty. This thorny-vine must have its ugly little head clipped off every time it pokes through the surface, and its root of covetousness and envy and self-love dug up and thrown on the burn pile.

Then there are “the desires for other things.” Our chief desire and the root and stock of all other desires in our lives must be the desire to know and love and cherish God Himself and the revealed will of God in His Word. “One thing have I desired,” writes the psalmist: “That I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” All other desires will choke out this one desire if this one desire is not cherished above all others. Guard against this and any and all other thorny-vines that threaten the fruitfulness of God’s Word in your life.

“Dear God, grant us repentance, and help us to nip in the bud all worldly cares, the love of money, our desires for worthless things, and replace them with utter devotion and love for You and Your will as found in Your Word. So we pray in Christ’s name and for His kingdom. Amen.”

Roots in the Rocks

“Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. . . . These likewise are the ones . . . who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they stumble.” (Mark 4:5, 6, 16, 17)

I live in the South and have lived in the South practically all of my life. I find it humorous to hear the comments each year: “It’s never been this hot before!” “I can’t believe how dry it is!” “It’s gotten a lot hotter earlier this year”—and on and on the complaints and seeming amazement roll out every time there is a gathering. But, as I said, I have lived in the South all of my life, and it always gets hot, pretty much from April to October, and we almost always have a drought (there have been exceptions) or at least what can be called a “dry season.” Grass stays green in your lawn if you water, but brown and yellow can generally be expected to take over at some point if you don’t. It has always been that way and always will be, “global warming” or not.

I have lived in the world all of my life too (as we all have, of course), and there is another certainty I have found: trouble comes to everyone, and persecution comes to all who love God’s Word enough to live by it (2 Timothy 3:12). Christ says in this passage there are “rainy-day Christians” who find it easy to be Christians when things are going well for them, when it is easy to flower and blossom and look promising. But when summer comes, and the sun gets to glaring, and the long haul of 100˚-days sets in—when sickness takes hold, relationships get tough, or the Christian thing to do goes contra “cool”—where is their faith and hope and love now? It has found no root, Christ says, in the stony soil of their hearts but is far more like the pretty spring wildflower-weeds that spring up today and wither tomorrow.

A well-balanced soil makes for not only happy but healthy plants. All green on top but no root results in a flashy but short show. Hearing the Word of God, believing it, committing to it, obeying it, and living according to it in every nook and cranny of life, come hell or high water and through thick and thin, means growing the deep roots that will survive any trouble/trial/tribulation or the sure persecution that comes from loving the Word more than the world. Survive, not “make easy.” Trouble and persecution by definition exclude “easy.” But while the heat of life destroys some, it is life and even joy to others—the difference being the roots that can reach the water of the Word of God through faith, hope, and obedience.

“Lord God, we give You thanks for the gift of Your Word, the sound of Your voice that has come to our ears. We pray our thanks would not be short-lived or fair-weather only but that we would love and cherish Your Word always, when the pressure is on as well as off. Help us to endure when all the world seems against us. Help us to rely upon You, trust in Your promises, hope in Your grace and mercy, when life is hot and dry and troublesome or mundane. Keep us from stumbling, dear God, and grant to us the strong roots of trees that bear fruit, whose leaves do not wither, because their delight and every thought is grounded in the Word of God. So we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”

Tidy Sidewalks

“And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it. . . . And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.” (Mark 4:4, 15)

Birds eat seed. I have three birdfeeders in my backyard, and the birds keep me busy filling them up with sunflower seeds. This is great, of course, if you are trying to attract birds, but it is a whole ’nother story if you are trying to grow sunflowers. Put out bean “seed” in the garden and wait and watch. Before long, here comes rockin’ robin to see what you left him. Plant enough for the birds.

Just as surely as the birds are going to eat some of your seed, the devil’s purpose in life is to take away the Word of God out of your heart. That has been his line from the very beginning. When God had given His word to Adam and Eve, Satan came along and twisted it and questioned it and tried to rub it out altogether.

So guard your heart. The first step is to plant the Word of God there. But if it is not guarded and cherished through faith and obedience, Satan will come waltzing in through an open door, robbing you of its benefit, strewing doubt and lies and temptations in its stead.

Sometimes we allow the Word of God to lie bare upon our soul like so much seed on the sidewalk. To use another metaphor, it is like we walk up the front steps of the Word, take a look around, pick up an item or two and turn it over curiously like we would a museum piece, place it back neatly on its little table or stand, and walk back out again. If we are not using the cutting board and knife, eating the food out of the refrigerator, sleeping in the bed, taking clothes off the hanger, etc., we are not living in the Word of God, from the Word of God, through the Word of God, by the Word of God.

To return to Christ’s picture, the Word of God must penetrate into the hard clay soil of our hearts (which needs softening up by the Spirit of God) and take root there, bearing fruit, else our hearts begin to run the risk of having it taken away altogether. This may sound ominous, but, sadly, there are too many once-orthodox-but-now-agnostic-or-atheist “believers” to be counted, whose lives each tell the same story. They heard the Word, but through disobedience their hearts were hardened to its life-changing message, and they have had less and less use for it until it is gone from their lives altogether. They have tidy sidewalks, thanks to the birds, who are all too happy to gobble up all that unused seed lying about and making such a mess of things. But the birds leave their own mess, of course, and in the end there is no true life where the voice of God has disappeared.

“God, we pray for better things in our own hearts. Break up the fallow ground, these stony hearts of clay, and cause Your Word to take root and bear fruit in our lives. Guard us from the evil one, dear God, who would rob us of Your Word and the life it brings through Christ our Lord. Move our hearts to respond to Your Word always in faith and obedience, and revive us, O God, according to Your Word, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”

Sowing Good Seed

“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. . . . The sower sows the word.” (Mark 4:3, 14)

God is a gardener. And when He made man, He made him a gardener too. He gave him fingers to dig in the dirt, fingers for sandy loam to run through. He gave him taste buds and a growling stomach to drive him into the dirt to plan, plant, and wait. He gave him eyes to behold the beauty of peach orchards, corn fields, and fat red tomato slices on the white plate before him. God made man with a hoe and a rake and a shovel already waiting for him in the shed out back.

God Himself is a sower of seed. His way is the way of life. He dreams of life, plans life, prepares for life, and makes life happen. When He makes dirt, He makes it for seeds to grow in. When He makes it rain, He rains life on His seed. When He calls for the sun to come out and blaze, the hot sun that sometimes also scorches and kills, He is calling forth the life in the seed. When He pulls weeds, leaving them to dry up and disintegrate and turn back into the dust from which they sprang, He is pulling for the seed. He does all He does for the life of the seedling: nurturing, caring, tilling, fertilizing, watering, praying for life and health and a good return for His labor.

Want to see life flourishing at your fingertips? Sow the Word of God into it. Do all you do to nurture the success of the Word of God in your life. The voice of God called forth all things into existence, and it is nothing other than the voice of God that brings forth life and goodness and causes all things to thrive. Beautiful fruit will come—through wind and rain and summer sun—where the Word of God takes root. If we want to see life and love and happiness and fruitfulness in our lives, in our families, in our world—in our “garden”—it will only come by way of the seed of the Word of God sown and grown and nurtured over time. When we pray according to the Word of God, think, dream, plan, work, speak, feel, and act according to the Word of God—when every square inch of the dirt floor of our lives is covered with the seed of the Word of God—“eye has not seen, nor ear heard” what God has in store for those who love Him in such a way.

“Great God in heaven above, we give thanks this day for Your sowing Your seed of love in our hearts and bringing forth the fruit of love for You in our lives. Thank You for the Word of God in which we find life, and thank You for causing it to take root in us. Grant to us life and fruit through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and make us good and hearty sowers of the Word ourselves, in our own lives and in the lives of all whom our lives touch. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”