Russell A. Cardwell Online

I’ve been taking some courses from the Christian counseling center, and yesterday morning (Thursday) I had to go by their headquarters near downtown Beaumont to pick up some materials. As I left, I changed my mind about how I was going to come back. Instead of going through downtown, I decided to come back on MLK. As a result, I ended up turning down a side road that ran between Magnolia and MLK. When I came around the corner, I found the street was full of prostitutes. They were right out in the street, going up to peoples cars.

I’d seen things like this in Houston when I lived there in the 80’s, but I never saw anything like this here. It’s one thing to know it goes on somewhere out of sight, but it was a shock to turn the corner and come face to face with it. And face to face I was—for a moment, at least. One of them was coming toward my car! Although she couldn’t have been more than thirty or so, the pain and horror of her life was graven so deeply into the lines of her face, I couldn’t bear to look at her for more than a moment. I had to stare at my steering wheel. (Not to mention I didn’t want her coming up to my car!)

We all step out of the light sometimes and stumble around in the darkness for a while before being drawn back to the path. But there are people who’ve been stumbling in darkness so long and who’ve wandered so far from the path they don’t know what light is anymore.

Jesus said, “The poor will be with you always.” But the poor are not really with us any more. They’re all on the other side of town, and we don’t go over there; we never see them; we’re not exposed to the lives they live. I can’t help thinking that if we lived among them as Jesus did, if we spent all our days surrounded by the kind of people I saw in the street yesterday, we could not help but feel differently about the lives we live.

So my prayer request is this: Offer a prayer today for those who are truly poor—not just poor in material goods, but poor in spirit—those whose souls are destitute, who have forgotten how to hope. These are those that Jesus had the heart for—those whom He called “blessed.”

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When all the smoke and mirrors that make up our fallen world fade away, only what has been faithful and hope-based and loving will remain. But why is love the “greatest” in this trio of faith, hope, and love?

It’s because faith and hope are along-the-way words, not end-of-the-trip words. Faith and hope get you through the too-long car trip. They’re the looking-forward part that keeps us going until we finally get home. But when at last we pull into the driveway and reach our final destination, the sign above the door will carry a single word: love.

     —John Trent, Ph.D., Be There!

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The C. S. Lewis novel I’m reading, That Hideous Strength, has this statement: “Every conscious being is either obeying God, or else is disobeying God.”

I’ve never looked at it in such black-and-white terms before. I’ve always thought of most things as being neutral. Sometimes I’m doing God’s will, sometimes I’m disobeying God’s will, but most of the stuff I’m doing has nothing to do with God’s will—just neutral activities. But I think he’s right about this—that all the neutral stuff can really be divided into obedience or disobedience of God. So how would that affect your life? What if about every action, not just the tough choices, you asked, “Is this what God wants me to do right now?” I hesitate even to try something like that.

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A rabbi asked his students, “When is it at dawn that one can tell the light from the darkness?”

One student replied, “When I can tell a goat from a donkey.”

“No,” answered the rabbi.

Another said, “When I can tell a palm tree from a fig.”

“No,” answered the rabbi again.

“Well, then what is the answer?” his students pressed him.

“Only when you look into the face of every man and every woman and see your brother and your sister,” said the rabbi. “Only then have you seen the light. All else is still darkness.”

     —Unknown

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Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

—John Wesley

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One of the characters in the C.S. Lewis novel I’ve been reading, Perelandra, said that God withholds a good from us only to offer us a greater good instead.

I wish I could have such simple assurance when my plans go awry.

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