Month: November 2012

I learned to drive in Drivers Ed in 10^th grade, but my Uncle Cecil trained me in many skills. He had me practicing my parallel parking skills in downtown Vinita in front of the Center Theatre at 9 o’clock on Saturday night when one show got out and the other was starting.

We Vinita kids honed our driving skills running up and down Main Street every Saturday night after the football game. I wish I had kept track of how many miles I actually drove those 3 years.

I went to work for SBC in 1971 as a telephone operator and put many miles on my vehicles over the 13 years I worked that job. Then I transferred into the network department, and since we drove company vehicles, we had to take on-the-job drivers training and yearly driving tests.

One of the most important things I learned from the Southwestern Bell drivers training was to scan the road a mile ahead of you, as far as you could see, to anticipate any hazard that might occur, so you could take evasive action.

Most of us drive one block at a time, instead of looking ahead. In Tulsa traffic, you’ll miss your exit that way. You should be planning ahead and looking for an opening in traffic two miles ahead of your exit. It takes training.

We should train our spirits to take the long view, to look ahead, further and further down the road.

”I will lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1

Raise your eyes up from your feet, where you are watching each step, the drudgery of everyday life. Don’t look at life one step, one day at a time. That may be how you are having to live your life right now, but lift up your eyes to the Hills of Glory. Your help is on the way. The Lord God of heaven has a plan.

Take the long view.

 

 

 

 

When Mom was growing up in the 1920s, there was only one telephone in the Kelso, Oklahoma, rural community and it was hanging on the wall at the store.

Now my 94-year-old Mom can see my sister who lives 45 miles away on the computer monitor when she talks to her. The first time she and my sister talked, my sister reached out her arms to hug Mom through the computer monitor and blew air kisses that Mom reached out to receive.

I have a program on that computer to access it remotely. One evening I started a word document and typed in large letters, “Hello, Mother, How are you tonight? I love you, Lavon.”

Mom picked up the phone and called me. “Did you make my computer write those words?”

It reminded me of the Bible story from Daniel about the Hand of God writing on the wall.

The fingers of a hand appeared and wrote on the wall at Belshazzar’s party. A thousand lords and ladies were drinking from the golden cups taken by his father Nebuchadnezzar from the temple in Jerusalem when he defeated Judah. They were defiling the precious holy vessels of Jehovah God by praising the false gods of Babylon.

When Belshazzar saw the finger writing, he was frozen with fear and his knees knocked together. He called for the wise men to interpret the writing but no one could tell him what it said. Someone suggested they call Daniel, “a man in the kingdom in whom is the Spirit of the Holy God.”

Daniel read the words, “MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. PERES: Your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians. ” Daniel 5:25-28. Within twenty-four hours the country had been conquered and Belshazzar was dead.

Our country is facing some serious struggles. It’s time for us who are the men and women of God full of the Spirit of the Holy God to interpret the writing on the wall. Have we been weighed in the balance and found wanting?

We can call on God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and He will hear from heaven and heal our land. (2 Chronicles 7:14.)