Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
- James 4:13-17
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
- Galatians 6:9-10
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
- Romans 7:14-20
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
- Romans 12:2
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
- James 1:27
And you sent widows away empty-handed and broke the strength of the fatherless.
- Job 22:9
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.
- Psalm 68:5
Boilerplate
I’m Harold Dykstra. I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story. My time is well spent. A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel. I did not know she was an angel at the time. The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone. And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy. She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others. She changed my life. Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’ She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant. Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs. After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.
This Week’s Question
In the last episode, Babs was focused on anger, but this week, she was upset with my lack of caring, or maybe my lack of acting upon that caring. It was almost as if she was using a cattle prod to get me moving.
“I love you, Harold.” Babs said, “But you say you love people more than you show it.”
“I love you too, Babs,” I replied, “But that is a lousy conversation starter.”
Babs fanned herself with the hotel’s brochure of local restaurants. In a calm, but haughty voice, she said, “Well, Sir, maybe this was a rebuke and not a conversation.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What did I do now, Babs? Did I leave the cap off the toothpaste again?”
Babs rolled her eyes, “Harold, can you be serious? I am trying to prepare you for when you are no longer working. In fact, your workday is not supposed to be over for a couple of hours, but here you are taking your shoes off.”
I smiled, “I worked through lunch. I got a big order.”
Babs huffed, “I know. You talk about nuts and bolts during lunch rather than the important topics of eternal importance.”
I groaned, “Babs, I am not a preacher. I help people by making sure the company they work for has the needed spare parts to avoid downtime. That keeps the company making money and it keeps the employee working. I also sell training programs, like I did today, and service projects, and even engineering studies. And we weren’t just talking about nuts and bolts. We had drawings spread all over the table in the restaurant. The waiter brought the food over and had to ask if we could take a break. I really earned an early out day today.”
Babs gave me her beady eyed look, which never really came off right. I made sure that I didn’t laugh. “Harold, I know all that, but you are normally supposed to work an eight-hour day, but you call the office after breakfast. You look at e-mails for a while. You go on a sales call that usually doesn’t take more than two hours, and then your afternoon is spent with your feet propped up. You could be helping the widows and orphans in the afternoon.”
I shrugged, “We are in a strange city, hundreds of miles from Tracy. How would I know where to go to help widows and orphans?” As soon as I said it, I knew she had the answer. I reached down to pick up my shoes.
Babs grinned, “The local food bank is not distributing, but the person running the food bank is short on workers this afternoon. While you were preventing a waiter in doing his job with your silly prints, I was making phone calls. Now get your shoes on. We have to sort donations and stock shelves.”
A couple of hours later, we were at a nice restaurant, having a meatless meal. Okay, there was crumbled bacon in my salad.
Babs said, “Don’t you feel better now that you have used your time off to help widows and orphans and people who are otherwise less fortunate?”
I nodded, “But Babs, the company does not mind me finishing early every now and then. On other days, I work a little later than quitting time. Especially when I get to a mill and the person that I came to see is tied up on an emergency. And my travel time, often on weekends, makes my work week a lot more than forty hours.”
Babs scrunched her nose, “But when you have time to help the poor, you should do something, not sit in your desk chair at the hotel and check the scores of the ball games.”
I snickered, “Babs, I only checked the scores and standings yesterday because the Tracy baseball team is on the cusp of making the playoffs. And you are about to tell me that has no eternal importance, but if they win their last game, they are in the wild card game. If the other team also loses, they can host the wild card game. I might have a playoff game that involves the local team.”
Babs sighed, “But you spend so few days in Tracy, how can that be your local team? The people around here root for Boston or one of the New York teams.”
I asked, “Do you keep up with who people root for in baseball?”
Babs nodded, “It is a great conversation starter. I know who the Christians are on the team so that I can lead into talking about Jesus. What is the saying? ‘They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’”
I smiled, “Somehow, I think all this is going to turn into a Bible study when we get back to the hotel.”
Babs giggled and said, “1, 2, 3.” And then we sang, “I don’t know” to the tune of my doorbell.
We got back to the hotel and Babs grabbed her Bible and went straight to the comfy chair and ottoman. She already had the little round table in place and my office chair. After all, we had been at the hotel for a few days, using it as our local hub.
Babs smiled, “What do they call not doing what you ought to do?”
I smiled, “That would be a sin of omission. You omit doing what you ought.”
Babs asked, “And where does God tell you to do what you ought?”
I looked puzzled, “The entire Bible? But telling us to not fall prey to the sin of omission, James 4:17 talks about not bragging about how wonderful we are and actually do what we should be doing.”
“Yep,” Babs said with a grin, “That’s what I read this morning after you left. The verses before the one you mentioned. They talk about how the focus is on making money, but we should be asking if this work is within God’s will.”
I moaned, “But Babs, making money is a part of life. We need that money to pay the bills. We need that money to give to the church so that the church can pay its bills. Our salads tonight were paid for with money. Making money is not a sin.”
Babs asked, “But you made the money by two in the afternoon, and we had time to go to the local food bank and help. But helping the food bank was not on your agenda, Harold.
I asked, “Is this the rebuke all over again?”
Babs shrugged, “I’m sorry, Harold. I just read Galatians 6:9-10 and it talks about not being weary in doing good. When you get too comfortable on the couch, you don’t move. How does that help the widows and orphans?”
I sighed, “But I need some rest, like early next week when Tracy is playing in the MLB playoffs.”
Babs smiled, “Okay, I will not have a bone to pick with you that night. And we can order a pizza or something and stay in, but can we add that extra bit of helping others on some of our other days? I would rather do that than visit a museum.”
I nodded. “But back to our Bible Study. Romans 7 does not just talk about the sin nature that humans have and the sins we commit, but Paul talks about how he does not do what he ought to do. Again, the sin of omission.”
Babs asked, “And James 1:27 talks about how true religion is helping widows and orphans. What does the Old Testament say?”
I replied, “A lot. Exodus 22:22-24 says that if you abuse widows and orphans, you are to be killed so that your wife becomes a widow, and your children become orphans. The NIV translates orphans as fatherless. It is kind of an eye for an eye type punishment. But the Law is there to be a warning about how God sees that situation. Bildad, in the book of Job, chapter 22, complains to Job that he is talking like his three friends are those kinds of people, not helping the widows and fatherless. That would be an insult in polite circles in those days, and to our shame, it is not as much of an insult these days. Rather than helping, we expect the government to do it. God did not command us to pay taxes to have that done. He commanded us to do it. In Psalm 68, God identifies Himself as being the dwelling place for such as these, a father to the fatherless and a defender of the widow.”
Babs grinned, “And don’t you feel better that you did just a little in helping them today?”
Credits
All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife. We would talk about anything and everything. And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.
My wife’s favorite thing to do was feed people. And to her, feeding them was sitting down with them and having a conversation. To her, the food was secondary. It was the conversation that made the food a meal. We gave to the food bank, but she would rather cook it, serve it, and sit with them, and we did that for a charity helping the homeless as long as her health held up. She knew that some of the others in the rotation would buy buckets of chicken or pizza, but for a more balanced diet, she fixed an elaborate meal. One particular meal was sweet and sour chicken, with rice and vegetables on the side. Sorry, I cannot remember what she had for dessert. I remember the main entre because I had to swerve the car to not be a statistic. We were cut off by a speeding motorist who was not paying attention. Some of the sauce splashed out of the baking pans in the trunk, and our car smelled like sweet and sour chicken for a couple of weeks until I had time to shampoo the floor mats. I love the smell, but it got old in a hurry. I lined the trunk with our old, worn towels after that incident.
Many people work hard all week, but they still have time to put in time doing work for God’s glory during the week.
And as I look at where I am right now, I am both fatherless with my Dad passing away over ten years ago and a widow (widower) with my wife’s passing away last year. For those who love the Lord, He is our dwelling place, both here and once we get to Heaven.
And if you are wondering, the big city of Tracy is a fictional town in a fictional state in the middle of the USA, a fifty-first state if you will, so looking at the MLB standings will not help you in locating the city.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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