HOPE: Where would you be without it?

HOPE RELEASED: [1 Timothy 2:13, 14]

For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression.

In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. Zeus (Greek supreme god) ordered her creation as vengeance on man and his benefactor, Prometheus, to whose brother Epimetheus he sent her. Later, Zeus sent Mercury with a box for Pandora.

Zeus forbade her to open the box; Pandora disobeyed and out came all the world's evils, only hope remained in the box. Pandora said, “Oh well! What the heck!” She again opened the lid, and out came hope which soothed man’s griefs and suffering.

The first Adam was also given a woman, but this woman was from the one, true God, Jehovah. Likewise, this woman was commanded not to do something, she too disobeyed. But God had hope remaining, so He sent His Son to release it from the hearts of man to soothe the pangs of suffering eternal damnation.

TAGS: Disobedience, First Adam,
Greek Mythology, Jesus, Pandora's Box, Sin

TWO OPTIONS: [John 6:37; other topics - Aging, hopelessness, kindness, Memorial Day, respect, seniors, veterans, WWII]

They called him Pops around the Butte County, California, jail. However, his real name was Coval Russell. He was 92 years-old and serving 14 months for trying to kill his 70-year-old landlord over a petty dispute.

The report in The Los Angeles Times [July 11, 2002] claimed his year in jail was the best year of his nine decades long life; evidently, Russell had few positive life encounters prior to incarceration.

Yet, jailers and inmates alike befriended their senior citizen neighbor. His new family tried to make the tall, lanky Oklahoma native as comfortable as possible; they provided an extra mattress, first spot in the chow line, extra television time, even additional outside calls for medications (he had prostrate cancer). The younger men considered themselves his grandkids.

Upon serving his term, Russell petitioned the judge to be allowed to remain in jail. He told the jurist the people in jail treated him with more respect than those on the outside. “They treat me like a human being in there.” He supposedly said. His appeal was rejected.

As a result, the distraught man told friends he had but two options – either to violate his parole in order to return to jail or to take his own life. On Wednesday, 11 July 2002, Coval Russell, the WWII veteran, who risked his life for his fellow Americans, jumped from a bridge over the Feather River, to his death.

People (family, friends, and neighbors) who should have and could have given him a third option, didn’t; people who had little to give and little power to give at all, gave all they had. They gave him what they thought he needed but missed the mark by a light-year.

What Coval Russell really wanted and needed was hope, and hope is what a man gets when he has a right relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. He was abandoned and disrespected by a callused and indifferent world. Christ, the lover of his soul, would never abandon him and would give him all the respect a man could imagine.

GRACE (GOD'S): Divine Surrogate for What We Deserve!

AT THE TIME APPOINTED [1 Peter 3:15; other topics - Timing]

During the June 4th 1944, WWII Normandy invasion 25-year-old Pvt. Ray Aebischer’s parachute opened with such a jolt his heavy jump-pack was torn from his shoulders, plummeting to earth. Everything he needed to survive (machine gun, carbine, ammo, canteen, rations, personal items, etc.) was lost. Ray was so sure he’d never see his gear again he dismissed it from his mind. Pvt. Aebischer didn’t count on Emmanuel Allain.

One dar in October 1997, a letter arrived from Mr. Allain, a WWII aficionado and collector. He wrote, “I found in a farm in Normandy all the stuff (belt pistol, carbine ... suspenders belt, canteen, pocket first aid, etc.) of a soldier.” The name on several of these items was Ray R. Aebischer. Now 81, Aebischer said he was “dumbfounded.”

Last month he and his wife flew to England, where Allain met them with the wayward jump-pack in hand. “I could think of so many instances where I could have been killed,” he said. “I thought to myself, except for the grace of God, I could be there. The real heroes are still over there.”

[“Soldier’s D-Day invasion gear found 53 years later,” The Washington Times, June 14, 1999, National Weekly Edition, p.18; from a Newport News, Va. (AP) report]

LOVE CHANGES THINGS [Galatians 3:1-3; other topics - Law, Love]

Consider the widow woman who remarried: her first husband was a totalitarian man, very controlling, dictatorial, and unforgiving; her second husband was loving, gentle, patient, and forgiving.

While cleaning a trunk, she came across her first husband’s list of rules: first, arise at five AM, every morning; second, breakfast at six AM, sharp, three basted eggs, toast lightly buttered; third, all washing to be ironed, including sheets, cases, and sox, with starch in collars; and fourth, fresh coffee, three times each day. Other rules concerned exact amounts of salt to use in his meals, how she was to appear in public, and what things she was could say in the company of others.

The list confronted her with a horrible truth: she was still keeping her first husband’s rules. But she smiled when she realized she had been forced to keep the rules under her first husband, yet now she was glad to keep them because of her second husband’s love for her.

Love changes things. What seems to be burdensome under the authority of a loveless tyrant becomes a labor of love under the authority of gracious master.

There is no longer a need to keep the Law for we are "saved by grace through faith" [Ephesians 2:8]. Yet Jesus said, “Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew 7:12] And Jesus’ half-brother said, “One who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does. … So speak and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” [James 1:25; 2:12]

Anytime we need to be reminded of the difference between Law and Grace, all we must do is revisit the first five books of the Old Testament; there we’ll see the old taskmaster at work. We may then smile and know that we are keeping His law gladly due to His great love for us, and that while we are yet sinners [Romans 5:8].