Our place has over 4 miles of fences. 2-1/2 miles of that define the lines between us and our neighbors. Another 1-1/2 miles is cross fences. Then more make up the lots and pens and around the barnyard. All of course, serve as ways to keep livestock managed. We have fences in life too. Borders we should not cross. Laws, rules and the documents and signs to declare them. There is something in the heart of man however, that resists fences. The old cowboy song said, Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, Don’t fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, Don’t fence me in. In a similar theme, a much newer song talked of signs, Signs Signs Everywhere there’s signs Messing up the scenery Breaking my mind Do this, don’t do that Can’t you read the sign Fences,…
2022 January
THANK YOU, FBSN Member Julie Anshasi, for writing this “Think About It” for me in my absence this weekend. How many of you sheepdogs have had people interrupt your services yelling that they have crack for sale? Or hoist a chair over their head, Jerry Springer style, and rush the pastor? Or get in the pastor’s face and scream, “I’m going to kill you?” All of this, and more, has happened at my church. Having been raised in the church; and having attended the services of multiple denominations in my lifetime, I have come to the sad conclusion that the problem of mental illness, while certainly genuine and nothing to be trivialized, doesn’t come close to the problem of demonic possession / oppression. Sometimes it’s not easy to determine if actions are mental, chemically induced, criminal or demonic. I think of the young man who wandered into our service, sat…
I followed the news coming from Colleyville Texas on 1/15/22. Short story was that a gunman entered a synagogue, took hostages, matched his skills with the FBI HRT team and came up on the short end. Hostages rescued. Attacker dead. The motive appears to be (at least in part) that the attacker claimed to be the (or “a”) brother of Aafia Siddiqui. Siddiqui was the first female Islamic terrorist arrested after 9/11, now serving a multi-year sentence in Federal prison. While the Colleyville attacker could be a blood relative, many extremists consider Siddiqui as their sister wrongly accused. I recalled what I wrote in my own book (Evil Invades Sanctuary). Threats are endless and unpredictable, as are their triggers (reasons for the attacks). Some motives are more comprehensible than others …, but all can be considered an unpredictable array of possibilities of emergency situations affecting ministries. To be aware of…