John Lennon: "Mother"

 I'm glad John wrote and sang this painful song. Many children don't have the idyllic kind of upbringing which 1950s television portrayed. John's father left him when he was five and his mother didn't want the responsibility of a child. So he lived with his aunt, the same one who said he'd never make a living from his music.

Listen to the song here:

Though the Bible tells us how to raise children, reality isn't so kind. In fact, even princes had times of trouble. We read in 2 Samuel 4:4 (Bible in Basic English), "Now Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son whose feet were damaged. He was five years old when news of the death of Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel, and the woman who took care of him took him up and went in flight: and while she was getting him away as quickly as she was able, he had a fall and his feet were damaged. His name was Mephibosheth."

Mephibosheth was fortunate that he wasn't killed, as the sons of some princes were, when a new king came to power.

We see how David avenged the Gibeonites, whom Saul foolishly murdered, in 2 Samuel 21:6 and 7 (BBE). The people said to David, "'Let seven men of his family be given up to us and we will put an end to them by hanging them before the Lord in Gibeon, on the hill of the Lord.' And the king said, 'I will give them.' But the king did not give up Mephibosheth, the son of Saul's son Jonathan, because of the Lord's oath made between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul."

Though we might have lived without a mother or father, the Lord still cares for us since he's our heavenly father. Deuteronomy 10:17 (BBE) reminds us both of his greatness and his tenderness. "For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, strong in power and greatly to be feared, who has no respect for any man's position and takes no rewards: Judging uprightly in the cause of the widow and of the child who has no father, and giving food and clothing in his mercy to the man from a strange country."

If he hasn't sent Christ to bring us to himself by Monday, I hope to post about life during war time.

Saturday Song: Elton John, "Empty Garden"

December 8, 1980 was an ordinary evening for me. I had no idea that while I was at the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship dinner in Edmonton, John Lennon fought for his life in New York City. Not only was I oblivious about his death but I didn't know it happened until I bought a news paper the next morning.

Elton John summed up all of our feelings the next year with his song called "Empty Garden." That line about one insect destroying so much grain described the situation well.

Listen to this tribute to John Lennon here.

According to many people these days, it's the availability of guns that's the problem. They claim that if there were no guns, nobody would die. But we see that in lands where guns are tightly restricted, criminals steal or smuggle them in.

The real culprit is the human heart. Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV) puts the situation bluntly. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Only God knows the depths of human depravity. As Jeremiah 17:10 (KJV) explains, "I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

We can't blame our environment or upbringing either. Look at what Scripture says in Ezekiel 18:20 (KJV). "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."

Neither will banning guns help. Wicked people will just find other weapons to commit murder with. The real problem is spiritual, not material. Ephesians 6:12 (KJV) declares, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

So, what are your memories of that tragic evening when John was murdered by a mentally disturbed man? Let me know.

By the way, Monday's post will be about the prophecies of Christ's birth. This is one of many proofs of the Bible's veracity.

THE VALUE OF PERSISTANCE

I remember well the final two weeks of grade twelve. The mathematics course I took forty years ago drove me crazy. Even though it wasn't the most advance course, I couldn't comprehend how fractions could be multiplied and divided.

"Why can't you get it?" my math teacher would exclaim often when I turned in another test paper filled with mistakes. I didn't know the answer then but I now believe that I wasn't able to visualize what was going on in the equations he taught me.

One Wednesday evening, when a woman I call Sister Eileen drove me home from church, I poured out my complaint to her. "I'm so tempted to drop out of that course and try again in September," I finished.

"Don't drop out," she admonished as she parked in front of the house in which I rented a basement room. "You only have two weeks to go. If you quit now, you'll have to spend three months doing the same course over."

I pondered what she said as we sat in her car. It did make sense that I would have to work longer to get my high school diploma. On the other hand, the course felt like pure torture. How well I identified with Alice Cooper's "School's Out" hit record.

Another song which helped me plow through those final days was "Hold On" by John Lennon. I added my name into the lyrics and sang them to myself whenever I felt like I couldn't take one more humiliating day.

I'm glad I hung in there and finished the course. Though my mark was forty, the teacher felt sorry for me and added five more percent so I wouldn't get an F. Because I continued with that agonizing class, I was able to get my high school diploma at the end of June and have a worry-free summer.

Because I stuck with the class, I was able to attend a job and mobility training course at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto that September. If I hadn't heeded Sister Eileen's advice, I would have had three more months of slogging my way through the same math problems which I couldn't understand.

As for that summer and the subsequent trip to Toronto, I wrote about it in a book called How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Read more about how God providentially led me to a true understanding of him at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell's Books.