Test of Endurance

By A. Toro (March 15, 2017)

There are too many permissible (and illegal) situations hindering you and me far from our comfort zone. Your loved ones or acquaintances are also deterred (and secretly disdained) in the midst of their usual roads; so we´re not troubled alone on the ways life blew its casts as a certain type of personality tests we wouldn´t like to fill in, as long as we´ve lived.

I have heard what some people said when misfortune came. It’s too easy to trust in wealth to sort out food shortage, material lacks and I myself also was deluded -too prone- to think that if “I had enough money” I would not be experiencing certain economic shortcomings, or a recurrent undesirable delay to eat each time I wanted.

Jacob trusted Yahweh in his journey. He made that vow as a resolute commitment, and God agreed with him...

We all need to know what a recession is. Bankruptcies have served to develop innovative brainpowers and to make new business but the scarcity communism brings is a hand-me-down evil to lure people away another place they will be fatally preyed: We need to work! We’ll do well teaching people to do human efforts; telling them no one is to be enslaved “by receiving a fish” from any Government or ruling power, because we were made to serve one another (as teammates) and to get our daily bread and shelter.

Many countries in Latin American were set free from Spain when its citizens were highly taxed and commercially caught up as another monopolized merchandise had by the Spaniards king’s will. All America was discovered when the shortest European trade road was blocked by pirates, Turks and Arabs, as soon as all these were their opposite party in trading and strong religious enemies of that Christianized Europe. Was it a matter of will or fate?

At the end of that remote day hundreds of settled men in America realized their political leaders were not their kings or noblemen. They disbelieved that Pauline teaching (Rom 13:1) that said “all rulers were set by the will of God” (a current thought widespread by medieval thought) but it was the stronghold of an evil hand who also compelled them to flee to another continent -venturing away- towards the lands they also (likewise) conquered from native people, former inhabitants of those places they invaded with foreign fleets, sharp swords, gunpowder, armed horses, and the power of a machinery of annihilation those original communities never knew.

Spain prohibited commercial trade within its several colonies in America. The kings wanted to rule everything they would get monetary benefits to the Crown and its lords so, settled men in North and South America knew what they wanted: To be free, once again.

European governments promised their colonist freedom at that invasive beginning in America but, once the dirty job of killing and inhabiting was done, they drew near to settle down to claim their “legal and divine” rights as feuds to get those unpaid lots the saw taxable from “their citizens”… Same way Rome did from local European exploits, underground. What a parallelism! American inhabitants remained –partly- nationals of their home state (their crown) but were not literally under their home state's system of government.

F. Drake, H. J. Morgan, W. Dampier and more pirates were permitted to sail the Atlantic to do what they also did on vast seas -the very same thing today we see the “Islamic State” does in Syria!

Imperial nations are used to do war business to back up their commercial ambition and these, as also thieves and drug dealers do, would hire someone´s service to wash their dirty money and, before that truth could be unearthed, they will ask too many people to ‘keep on digging’ the way pirates asked those they have killed, to hide their spoils in a remote territory.

Is it “your fate” to be slayed by the hands of those who controlled you?

Sometimes we forget who we are, where we belonged, and the place we have to keep.

Hagar was a slave woman. She made the mistake of boasting before of the eyes of the wife of her male master, so Sara mistreated her badly to overrun such misbehaving. Hagar, at her flight, was met by the angel of God who appeared unto her asking that she would come back, being submissive (Gen 16:9).

Fourteen or fifteen years later a concealed scornful attitude appeared on the face of Hagar’s son. The very thing Hagar previously planned to do -her own will- this time was asked by the woman she previously flew and ran. This time Abraham casted out the bond-woman and their offspring, just when the child was at an age both of them would survive near to Beersheba.

It wasn’t Hagar’s “fate” to die so soon! But how many times we have wanted to do certain things that misfired the wrong timing?

Columbus failed a couple of times before he discovered any piece of land in America.

T. A. Edison failed several times before he made “the miracle” of the gramophone, the light bulb or the telegraph.

In the biblical literature there were several other men who wanted to quit and flight their own timing, far away from the test of endurance they had before their eyes:

• He refused to do God’s will at first (Jon 4:2) and later on, he wanted God did what Jonah had proclaimed as fatally and terminally expected (Jon 4:11). Similarly to many people today, Jonah got disappointed when God spared the lives of thousands who repented and utterly changed.
• Mordecai –too many times- was expected to be knelt and humiliated (Est 3:2).
• David was anointed to be Israel’s king, yet he hid and flew from Saul for 14 years before he had the crown of that kingdom.
• Jesus was tested, to see what He was made of, and Satan himself appeared to lure Him away in the desert.

If there are some doubts… We’re not alone in evaluating wrongly what it’s NOT easily seen!

When we are at a hippodrome we often see wrong the horse’s race. We could be using brand-new binoculars but, since we are too concerned on what it’s actually happening in the leading front (the end line) we would not take heed of what would be happening in the rear end, in remote places, and the backsides or underground.

Fatalism opposes Determinism (and none these are the final truth God sees!)

Certain events are evitable when some immediate consequences are inferred well. Vague thoughts -or extrapolated fears- will bring mishaps. It is probable actual antecedents gave us NOT sufficient hints “to predict” what would be finally happening. So, similarly to the written records of human history, the account of those deeds and wrongs have inspired –in the other hand of that misled humanism - the Biblical wisdom we’ve found out (yet mixed with their bias) to make believe this was the exact and “universal” religious experience of those men who also believed God was directing them to write down what we could be reading this time, to believe with our consent or to kick it off as an useless lie. Is it too difficult God appeared in dreams talking to humankind? However, although no men from the past came to validate alive what it is written in any of the records of human history, we have believed -of free will- what we have learned and heard without that fractional witnessing: What I see here is not the same “truth” you see over there!

There is a free will when it is made a moral move to avoid (and correct) what it is wrong in humankind. Contrarily to few sacred books, secular history shows partiality when it pictures national heroes’ wrongdoings as good deeds, or as a trustworthy source of information to love the national epics each country has prepared to make believe their nationals and –too often- their kids, that all that it is read about them is true. The first moral change I needed in my character came from the wisdom in the Bible (and not by enhanced fears or the lies of epic history). I don’t really care about a future hope, but for the immediate change of life we need to undertake, to enjoy this present that shouldn’t be so bad (and it deserves a collective toil).

We are wrong if we think kids are sent to school to let their parents go to work. We were sent to school to avoid being anybody’s slave and to get a better job and enough food.

We’ve made the best we knew (or could) to live our life and not what others wanted or said they expected. They said anything they wanted, and we understood what we wanted to be at last. So here it’s also denied the possibility of a cursed fate when we were willfully determined to move –in advance- to go ahead freely.

Jacob made his move on a proclaimed faith we might read as a pledge. He vowed he would believe in the Godhead -a spiritual Lord- who would be helping him to live. He told Him what he expected of God and what he was determined to offer if he was served: Loyalty bartered for the same trade he would receive {and 10 % of what it was gained from being submissive to that Lordship} (Gen 28:22).

What would I give back if I gained this horse race I’m seeing I’m losing?

Parallel sidewalks

Last week several things I planned misfired! I tried to get some money by selling computers spare parts and other things I have. I trusted those I offered the items I had for sale, and I was lied… I turned back to my mother’s house. I had planned to be “home” that weekend, but I got confused and bitterly disappointed. Abandoning myself, I made my move back to the place I had left, wanting to seek God’s will; so I entered a place where I wanted to pray… I was almost penniless! (And I wanted to buy food).

I understood I missed God’s road. I wanted to make some profit with the old things I owned and –by doing it- I failed in serving Him just by being over concerned and self-centered.

At the same time, I needed to know I’m stealing God’s money when I’m not sharing it with the needy, each time He has blessed me (That’s why I love that picture with the ocean above!)

I prayed I wanted to serve Him. I shed some tears and I understood I was wrong, all that way I journeyed alone and selfish...

When I left that church I had no place to go. Although I was in front of my mother’s house, I knew I wasn’t welcomed there, and she wasn’t inside to open that locked door.

I asked -in prayer- a place I would go to serve Him... I wanted to hear His personal voice or, at least, to guess what His will was [It feels really ugly not knowing what to do when you want to serve someOne you can´t get a direct spoken word, or an unequivocal nod]

I reverently went to a public square… I sat next to a young woman who was alone in a wooden bench where I saw an empty space I could sit on. I observed the people playing around and, in front of my eyes there was a pink and white Catholic church I would have entered (to pray) if they had not those idols I totally hate and regret.

I wished I had a guiding answer –from God- to know what He wanted me to do. But I sat over there quietly, while these thoughts were my guiding will, and silent vow.

Any moment I came back from my thinking I overheard a man talking to a threefold group of school boys. That man suggested them not to consume drugs and, at the same time, he was selling candies. The young lady -who sat next to me- asked for the price of those candies and soon after she realized she could not pay for anything he had. He offered a bargain the young woman made a question I answered for him. It was understandable what I thought! But that man clarified what remained foggy.

When that man left the chat he had started, I noticed how simple that woman was. I asked her few things and a nice conversation of five hours long soon after started, to finally understand we both were walking in parallel sidewalks this life.

I won’t keep a written record of what I learned when meeting “Andreína”:

• If she felt disgusted when leaving a bakery the moment she bought some bread and someone drew near asking her a piece of loaf, I also have felt what she has felt.
• If she was experiencing the starvation I now know -at the scarcity of money and food we have outlived in Venezuela- I also know what she feels and sees.
• If she was jobless and hoping to get the money someone owes her when she got fired, I know what it is.

I wanted to serve God that day…

It downed on me she was really hungry.

She told me she was hospitalized the day before and simply lacked money to buy the medicines the doctor ordered. What I really loved from this young woman was that she wasn’t begging for money or help. We both talked and shared.

At the beginning she started to talk to me as if I was too old, with that distant respect we use formally and, any moment, we were actually talking as old dear friends. [There are trust levels in casual conversations, but we quickly reached the top, which is my natural and default offset].

I guessed she was more than starving!

Not too soon after, I humbly asked if she didn’t mind we went to buy some bread and fruits. In the meantime, I myself also endured that hunger (as a test of deprivation) along with what it is felt at knowing she had –at certain length- lived deprived from the “normal” life I had immodestly taken for granted...

There was a 10.000 bill hidden in my wallet (for sudden emergencies).

I would have spent it lovingly to feed her for two days, if I had enough food assured my own home… [You know God what it´s all about!]

Yet, I don’t believe what Paul wrote in I Tim. 5:8 and, his own writings, have witnessed he had experienced scarcity and hunger (1Cor 4:11); since we’re all under a test of spiritual endurance…

When we finished eating, it was me the one who killed the final piece of papaya I’d bought. She ate slowly with decent manners, also biting the papaya’s skin I obviously despised (since we had no place to wash that fruit) and I desired I had a soft piece of a napkin to clean her mouth and humble hands… I used the rough piece of paper I had!

-You owe me nothing, Andreína! –I told her- Anything I did was an offering, a spiritual service I’ve been asking God today.

-I have 3 months without a job. I was used to eat anything I saw and wanted –she said- but now things are not the same…

-Hmm! –I thought to myself what I heard and said- God can’t be a private manifestation of a group, neither a subjective experience of few… If He wants to be known or worshiped, He has to show up! And you are a new believer.

"Why sit we here until we die?"

There’s a biblical story of two lepers who found out Israel’s enemies had flown for their life. That time it was their chance to eat and get anything materially worthy they could pick and keep, until the time they realized they were selfish, self-centered, with an inexcusable greed.

At the beginning of that story they said unwavering -and fatally- to themselves:

"Why sit we here until we die?" (2 Kings 7:3).

Death seems natural under certain social and conflicting conditions, and that moment –just for them- it could be seen as a predictable thing they wanted to push: We all live and die!

Lepers were untouchables and feared outcasts in ancient times. These two men had largely lived like pariahs, subsisting deprived from the benefits of an average social life, the moment they verbally showed such fatal determinism. They quickly assumed such “fate” at looking at their immediate situation, viewing the civil turmoil around of that siege and recognizing –with finite knowledge- Israel’s weak military inadequacy.

Be assured none of them wanted to die instantly! They simply sought another way to keep their breath by surrendering to the enemies (and serving themselves for another meal and a better day).

With the view of seeking foreign mercy (or death) they ventured towards the soldiers attacking their country. Thinking they would speed up their final fate -to be released from the siege and starvation- then they soon after realized another thing: The enemy had flown.

Before I left Andreína I wanted to share half of anything I thought I had won in the lottery… Yes! I do bet few cents –sometimes- to see if “luck” or present life returns any good I might have done to amend my wrongdoings [ I think we need to be repaid here (for the good and wrongs). And it should not be expected next life! ]

Zaccheus gave half of the money he had to the needy. Obviously he had enough money to live daily! But did he surely have the time to so at dining with Jesus? That half he had saved in his homey vault probably (Luk 19:8) went elsewhere... In my case that moment of sharing, what I had planned and dreamed to do backfired when I realized I had also nothing to give her as a needy.

Perhaps I have no way to be heard up there in heavens, or that there’s no way to get out of what I have asked currently with no toil...

However, I prayed God would help her to get what she badly needs to stay alive.

When I reached my mother’s, I remembered how poorly she was dressed. Then I quickly wanted to bring her some clothing I had for me (and the needy) in a plastic bag over there… I tried to find her in the middle of that noisy crowd I tried to run from, but she has flown somewhere away!

I also hope she would have prayed the way Jacob prayed:

“If He gives me food to eat and clothes to wear…” (Gen 28:20-21)

In His service!

PS

Although I’ not a writer, I can appreciate the effort and the job some of them have done to produce their works now. This simple article, to be written and polished, consumed 1213 minutes (20 hours) of me.

I do not expect to be repaid! I did this blog my own will and, if this serves for anything, I hope God deals with you to help –somehow- those who are in material or spiritual needs.

PS 2

I want you to be blessed by reading this random final “note” I encountered when proofreading:

“I want you to share your food with the hungry. I want you to find the poor who don't have homes and bring them into your own homes. When you see people who have no clothes, give them your clothes! Don't hide from your relatives when they need help.”

(Isaiah 58:7) [ERV]