just answer the question

Is man smarter than animals?  I wonder sometimes, like when my friend Joe got his new Vizsla years ago, he named him Ralph.  Now we had never heard of any dog named Ralph, but when asked why Ralph, he simply told us “when I got him as a puppy, I asked him his name, and he said “rowf!”  And so he was self proclaimed Ralph.  Good thing he didn’t say “woof” or start to whine.  Another dog story tells us of the man who claimed his dog knew math.  Going on Johnny Carson, Johnny was skeptical, but out came the owner with his proud pooch.  Who actually looked rather dazed.  After Johnny and the owner talked, Johnny told him to show him.  Having the dog sit attentively, he asked the dog “what is two minus two?”  And the dog just sat there, saying nothing.  After a few seconds Johnny got nervous, and asked “is the dog going to answer?”  To which the owner replied “he did, two minus two is nothing, and he said nothing.”  Gotcha Johnny, bet your dog can’t do that.  But my favorite animal story is from Red Skelton.  He claims his horse can add, and after assembling a group in the stable, proceeds.  He whispers something in the horse’s ear, then asks him “how much is 2 plus 2?”  The horse hesitates a few seconds, then hits his hoof on the ground four times, 1-2-3-4.  The crowd is silent, they’re amazed, and then Red goes up to the horse, hitting his foot on the ground, “c’mon boy, one more.”  It seems the horse could count better than Red.  Maybe we just need to listen to the answers better, they answered correctly all three times.

After raising two sons, I learned during the teen age years the power of a one word answer.  “Can I go out?”  “No.”  “Can you give me $10”  “No.”  “Can I have a new motorcycle?”  Well, I didn’t say it was perfect.  But when giving one word answers, it leaves no room to argue.  But when you say “no it’s a school night,” they can argue, just like you used to.  “I don’t have $10,” could be answered “that’s OK Dad, just give me $5 now, you can owe me the rest.”  And can I have a new motorcycle usually meant a ride to the bike shop to look.  Without telling Theresa, although after leaving in the truck, she learned to get suspicious.  One word answers, they still work today.  Yet today I find that we have a whole generation that cannot give one word answers, or won’t.  Ask someone a yes or no question, you get a small dissertation for the answer, but not answering the question.  Democrats are real good at this.  “Did you see what happened?”  “Well I was busy driving, when the light turned red, and a dog barked, and lost my train of thought.”  You didn’t answer the question, was that a yes or no?  Even the subtraction hound answered better.  “Do you ride motorcycles?”  “I had a friend who crashed, and after that I rather walk.”  Is that a no?  “Were you in church Sunday?”  “Well the Chargers were on.”  Is that a no?  Why don’t you just answer the question?  Why can’t people just say no, yet rather perjure themselves even more?  Yet I hear this everywhere, and when I give a yes or no answer, catch the questioner off guard.  He doesn’t have that extra few seconds to program himself for a response.  “What did you say?”  And again the same one word answer.  Or does that make it a two word answer?  Yet when asked to give details about something, “I don’t know,” is often the answer.  I guess if you want details, ask it in the form of a yes or no question.  Invoke the Jeopardy rules, become the big winner.

So when asked are you saved, how do you answer?  A simple yes or no question, yet I get the story of the bad time in church.  How they went to Catholic school.  How they don’t believe religion.  Does that mean no?  Why can’t you just admit it?  Saying nothing is still saying no, unless you are the subtracting dog.  But yet it is the one thing, the final exam between us and heaven.  And given in the form of an open book test, Jesus tells us “you must be born again.”  “I am the only way.”  Yet many skirt the issue, thinking they skillfully have avoided making a decision.  Outsmarting God.  Yet that is their decision, they have not acknowledged Jesus.  Well, maybe some will say he is a great rabbi, but great teaching won’t get you to heaven.  Study to find yourself approved, not saved.  But we give to the poor, and tithe at church.  We even talk to our kids about drugs, and make them go to church.  Maybe not bad things, but who is the impetus on, you or God?  Where is Jesus in all this?    The answer is still no.  For Jesus tells us “to be gone, you never knew me.”  Talking to a crowd, the church type, who did many things in his name, but for their glory.  But it was Peter, when Jesus asked him “who do you say I am?”  told him “you are the Christ.”  And he answered correctly.  So who do you say Jesus is?  Believing in God isn’t enough, even the demons do, and shake.  They know who Jesus is, and rebelled, and went to hell.  Do you get it now?  So many call out to his name in vain, blaspheming it, yet he loves back in return.  So I ask, are you saved?  Maybe a better question is “would you like to be forgiven?”

Sometime in your life, you will be asked by the spirit who you say Jesus is?  Saying nothing will be saying no.  No means hell, yes means heaven.  God will honor your request to not acknowledge him on earth, and he won’t know you in hell.  Yet you will worship him every day in eternity, but in utter pain, for every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Even under the earth.  While the rest of us will worship in complete peace and joy.  Again I ask, are you saved?  If the yes or no part is too hard, how about “would you rather be in heaven or hell?”  And you have just been given the answer, right from the one who is the only way.  Yet many will deny him, or put him off, until it is too late.  Today is the day of salvation for many, it is also the day of damnation for those who deny Jesus.  Inspector Clouseau before being attacked by a dog in a hotel, asked the manager “does your dog bite?” And bending down to pet it is viciously attacked.  To which the manager answers “it’s not my dog.”  Another yes or no question.  Is Jesus your Lord and savior?  Only two people know, you and him.  Don’t kid yourself or deny yourself into hell.  Now you know, what is your answer?  Are you saved?  A simple yes or no question, that has eternal ramifications.  There are many excuses for losing, don’t add yours to it.  Jesus is Lord.  Amen.

love with compassion,

Mike

matthew25biker.blogspot.com

buy American, or bye, America

There was a time when “buy American” was more than a choice, it was the choice, for American hands designed, made, and manufactured the best and greatest merchandise in the world.  We were the country that manufactured most of the world’s cars, and close to 100% of them sold here were made here.  Let’s test your automotive geography and see.  Ford meant Dearborn, Studebaker meant South Bend, Oldsmobile meant Lansing, Buick meant Flint, Jeep meant Toledo, Rambler meant Kenosha, and Detroit was home to everyone else from Chevrolet to Chrysler, Hamtrammck meant Dodge and Cadillac was The Standard of the World.  Industrial named towns, where workers toiled and built American products.  A far cry from the Imports that we grew up with.  Weird cars, poorly designed, and driven by college professor types who smoked pipes and wore funny hats and goatees.  Who were more interested in conservative cars than their liberal ideas.  Cars built in places like Sindelfingen, Gothenburg, Trollhatten, Wolfsburg, and ones we could relate to such as Abingdon, Coventry, or Lingotto.  They had names like Mercedes Benz, Volvo, SAAB, Volkswagen, and FIAT.  Small, tiny, uncomfortable, they were the opposite of our appetite, which was longer, lower, wider, V-8 powered, and covered in an excess of chrome.  We were America, we were Americans, and we led the world, and the world followed.  And that was the way it should be.

But soon cars started coming from places named Tokyo, Hamamatsu, and Yokohama. Cars we wouldn’t be seen in on a bet, with dubious quality.  Remember the fading black bumpers on Japanese cars that faded to black with or without washing? German rubber disintegrating while watching?  English cars that leaked, German cars that weeped, and yeah, now you remember.  But today, where “buy American” has a label attached to it, are what you are buying really American made?  Or even an American car?  Honda has three plants in The US of A.  Toyotas are built in Indiana.  BMW’s are made in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Mercedes Benz in Tuscaloosa.  Still confused, Mazdas are made in Flat Rock, Michigan, Nissan in Tennessee and Mississippi.  Hyundai in Alabama, and VW were once made in Pennsylvania.  Still confused, how about once proud American nameplates?  Chevrolet, built in South Korea, GTO’s built in Australia, Ford and GM trucks still built in the States, but with only 60-70% US made parts.  Want a Camaro, built in Canada.  And for a car to considered an American built car, it only has to have 50% American made parts, so what are you driving?  Buy American, has really turned into bye America.  When Nissan and Toyota both sell US made trucks, and Ford builds cars in Mexico, GM trucks in Mexico-please tell me it isn’t so?  What has happened to the famed nameplates we grew up with?  Will we soon call them South American trucks, Canadian cars, or world cars, as many refer to them now.  Design them in China, make them in Hanoi, and import them to America-all under a Chevrolet name?  See the USA in your Chevrolet?-it went overseas, and never came back the same.  Maybe we should have seen it coming when Mercedes Benz were sold through Studebaker, or when Ford was offered the VW plant from Germany as war reparations and said no, what was it good for, and then in 1949 two VW’s were imported.  But today buying American is becoming a foreign concept.  So what are we to think about our own heritage?  Born in Texas, raised in Jersey, moved to California?  But am I still an American?  Born in the US of A and proud of it.  But what of hyphenated Americans?  What of hyphenated anything?  What are they really?

Some years back a woman of Persian descent asked me what nationality I was?  I said American, and she asked what kind of American?  Just an American, what could be added to the best to make it better?  But no, she meant where was my heritage, again America, going back over 150 years.  But she wanted to go back further, and kept pressing.  And I wanted to quit answering...I am an American-not a hyphenated hybrid anything.  Born and raised.  But she kept pressing, and it became time to end the interrogation.  So I told her, “you really could say I am a heaven-American, for my heritage and family are based on Jesus Christ.  I am a Christian, and my final home, my only home will be heaven.”  And she got up and left.  She asked, I answered, and told her the truth.  My name is written in the census in heaven.  I am here but for a short time, the Bible calls us sojourners.  Travellers.  Which maybe explains my love of being on the road.  And the road feeling more like home with each trip.  As Christians we are truly foreigners here, our citizenship is in heaven, and Jesus has the papers to prove it. The Book of Life.  I am not a hyphenated anything.  And unlike a car with an MSO, Manufacturer’s Statement of Origin, I have an Master’s Statement of Origin, telling me God came to earth in the form of a man, then returned to heaven.  My birth certificate may state Texas, but my born again certificate states heaven.  And heaven is where I will spend eternity.  Much easier to explain than where was your American car built?  Or buying American built in Mexico.  And so we find the gospel is simple so I can get it.  Next time you buy a part for your Chevy, and it says made in China, or for your Mercedes Benz and its states Japan, think about it.  But even more important, think of where parts for you come from?  Where were you created?  By whom?  And all signs will point you to heaven.  Just like Jesus does.  A choice you make, and if you want to eliminate hell, choose heaven.  Hell exists for the angels who fell, and wouldn’t have a place for people if they didn’t choose it.  Think about that one-hell is a choice, just like heaven is. 

Someday it will be bye, America, and hello eternity.  I am going to heaven, how about you?  Jesus came to save you from hell,will you let him?  If the name sounds foreign to you, I encourage you to meet him. Be guilty by association with him, knowing him personally.  As we look back to Fords from Dearborn, Chevies from Detroit, and Buicks from Flint, let us not become orphans like many car brands.  Studebaker from South Bend, Olds from Flint, Plymouth from Detroit, and Rambler from Kenosha.  All proud names at one time, now only found in history.  Where you will be found is up to you.  Jesus knocks, what will your answer be?  All my parts are 100% heavenly...if you are what you drive, where you go will tell us what you are.  Only Christians make it to heaven.  Everyone else is a foreigner.  Maybe that is why God will welcome us home some day.  And for us, that place over the rainbow will be heavenly.  Truly there is no place like home, when we call it heaven, and heaven calls us.

love with compassion,

Mike

matthew25biker.blogspot.com

this old truck is really vintage

There was many a time as a kid I was told “this isn’t the library, if you want to read a magazine you have to buy it,” by John at the Sweet Shoppe.  But a recent walk through Barnes and Noble is a quick reminder of how things have changed.  I know of no other place where you don’t have to buy or rent the goods, and for the price of a Starbucks can read all the latest if not so greatest books and magazines.  So while killing time, looking for the best way to spend the gift card I had, I noticed the cover from Vintage Truck, which used to be called This Old Truck, until the This Old House people threatened to sue.  It seems they felt their devotees may confuse the two, houses and trucks, and so This Old Truck became Vintage Truck.  Either way, a great magazine devoted to the preservation of small trucks.  And the first thing I noticed after I noticed the cover, was it was different, but the same.  The magazine I get every other month in the mail has a great photo of an old truck on it, with only the title Vintage Truck on it.  This one was along with the same photo, had teasers of the articles in side, ruining the cover shot.  Why would they do that crossed my mind for a second, and then I recalled a conversation with some guys I knew from Road Rider, now Motorcycle Consumer News, from back in the early eighties.  They too only printed great photos on the covers, but to increase sales, which it did, they too put teasers on the cover.  Which only goes to show a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the words make you buy the magazine.  No word yet on the version found in the library....

Now I must admit that I too fall for a pretty face, and more often than not the words on its cover.   Certain buzz words will get my attention, and make me pick up the book, hoping the content is as fulfilling as the teaser.  And what is the first thing we look at in the article-the pictures!  So maybe we discount the power of the cover photo, when the photo is the key to the story.  And once again one picture is worth a thousand words is intact.  You might want to ask yourself, “what makes me pick up a magazine and want to read it?”  Maybe we need to go back to another old saying, “you can’t tell a book by its cover,” and although the pictures get our attention it is the words that complete the transaction and make us look up what they say.  So looking at magazines on my ottoman, I notice all the words that grab my attention.  Where once cover girls, cover bikes, or cover cars once were, now words cover them, and tell me what is inside.  Which either makes me pick it up, or put it down.  At one time we had to thumb through it to see, now we get sound bite of written words, and make the decision.  And I wonder, how much do we miss when we don’t open the book to see what is inside?  And subtly we are being told what to read.  Not to read, and I wonder what I have missed over the years.  And if an advertiser, how many of my ads went unread based on the teasers on the cover.  Yet we are attracted by the picture, but it is the words that direct us.

Remember the children’s Bible covers when you were a kid?  Noah’s ark, how many times have you opened up to read about a great flood?  Yet I see very few if any Bibles that aren’t black.  Bonded leather, or other colors.  And still it is the best selling book of all times.  Imagine what it could do if it got creative in its advertising?  Think of the teasers on a cover.  Tailored to each group it is trying to read.  In a health store, “thousands live on bread and fish alone.”  For working moms, “Feed your family for pennies of bread and fish!”  And the story tells of Jesus feeding the 5000 with a few bread and fish.  Science fiction fans would be spellbound at “the battle of Armageddon!”  Even porn stores could quote the Song of Solomon, intimate reading.  Rated X-how many now will pick it up and see?  All without pictures on the cover.  Imagine how Bible sales would increase if God had a great PR firm behind it?  So what is God thinking, why isn’t he advertising more?  Maybe we should go back to an evening in a garden, between Jesus and Nicodemus.  Old Nicky was told “you must be born again to enter the kingdom of God,” and all he could think of was a return to a prenatal time.  How could that be?  But Jesus was talking of a spiritual rebirth, a changing of heart, a rebirth of the spirit.  And although he left his meeting with Jesus asking questions, some 20 chapters later in John, we see him at the grave of Jesus, with Joseph or Arimethea asking for the body of Christ.  Something had happened to him in those 20 chapters, and he and Joseph, known as a silent believer, gave everything to take the body.  Nicky faced ridicule, power loss, and loss of his riches.  No headline can make you do that, just as no t-shirt, bumper sticker, or sermon can change you.  They are not bad, but by themselves don’t save.  It takes the same thing that changed Nicodemus, it takes the holy spirit to tell you that you need Jesus.  And only the spirit can change the heart to do that.  So maybe God knows what he is doing, and his advertising budget is well spent.  We find freedom in the spirit, and then when guided by that same spirit, we find the words to make us change. 

You may be the only Bible that someone may read.  What is on your cover?  What photo of Jesus do you want to know about you?  Or are you just a glam event, wanting the glory, but not paying the price?  Is there anything in your walk with Christ that shows Jesus in your life?  Or do you depend on words?  Which can help, or hurt.  How important are photos, or the act?  Quick, look at Jesus on the cross.  What comes to mind first, the vision or his words?  What were his last words?  But we remember the vision even more.  So maybe words sell magazines, but images change lives.  Now, what is on  your cover?  Any last minute changes before you go to print?

The same spirit that saved Nicodemus is the same Jesus that saved you.  No matter what your cover looks like, God can see the inside.  He can see the articles we are, and wants to edit them for our benefit.  And who could be a better editor than the one who inspired a best seller, the Bible?  Turn to him, be led by him, and become a best seller.  Not to compete with the Bible, but to be complete in the Bible.  Only found in Christ. 

Now for your table of contents....if necessary use words.  Be the gospel in action....dis-cover Jesus today!

love with compassion,

Mike

matthew25biker.blogspot.com

I used to know what that means

The story goes of a man applying for a job at a 7-11.  The manager asks him if he speaks any foreign languages, to which he replies “yes, English.”  Maybe it is just me, but times are changing, have changed, and the language I grew up with is not spoken today.  I am talking of English, or more precisely words used to describe things that we don’t have any more.  For example, let’s take a teenager of today, back to when I was a teen in the sixties, and see if he can speak the language. Or see if you can remember without an interpreter...

You wake up to the smell of bacon, your mom has a skillet going on the range, and has just dropped the toast.  Your glass of Tang awaits you, and you put Oleo on your Wonder toast.  Then it is off to school, one last trip in front of the mirror and an extra dab of Clearasil, and making sure you didn’t use too much Vitalis on your hair.  You go out to where your dad is waiting in the car, he is complaining about how cold it is, and working the choke to keep the car idling.  He just had it tuned last week, new plugs, breaker points, condenser, and had the carburetor adjusted.  He complains about his gas mileage, did he really need the 4 barrel carb, in all the traffic he hardly has a chance to get on it.  While waiting he asks you to roll up your window, and off to school you go.  Later that day when Mom picks you up, you roll down all the windows, because you are still hot from playing during recess, and when arriving home she tells you to roll them all back up, meaning opening each door, turning the window crank, then shutting each door after locking it.  Holding the handle up so it locks, if not it stays unlocked, and you don’t want to hear that speech again.  Next door the older guys are working on a jalopy, he just put duals on it, and is cleaning his Wide Ovals, the finest bias ply tire you can buy.  He got them from the gas station on the corner, where he buys hi test instead of ethyl, his car won’t run on anything else, but he feels the extra 5 cents a gallon is worth it.  And every few tankfuls uses Amoco Supreme, white gas, which is rumored to not leave deposits that must be burnt out on a freeway run at full throttle. 

Saturday means cutting the yard before you get an allowance, and moving the sprinkler to water afterwards.  Then you and your friends can set off for the Sweet Shop, where 12 cents buys you Archie, Sgt. Rock, or Richie Rich.  For a quarter you can read MAD, but don’t get it yet, but the older kids do, and some even read CARtoons, which must be cool, if only you understood it.  And when you return, your parents wonder why you read such junk, when Time, Life, Newsweek, and the daily paper are much better reading.  Sports Illustrated is a luxury, and old news, as the daily paper has the box scores, and tonight’s pitchers.  And on Sunday afternoons, you watch baseball doubleheaders, only going to the bathroom during commercials, no instant replay yet, and you don’t want to miss anything.  And for the next 6 hours you are filled with baseball, and you can review the box scores you kept later.  In the fall it is football, again no replays, so you sit watching, eating pretzels and Cokes, only the different drink 7-Up, it isn’t the Uncola yet, and water is the only thing diet, out of the tap, not bottled.

Mom has gone shopping on Saturday, and brings in the bags of groceries, loaded in her car by a bag boy, in paper bags, double bagged for the heavier items.  Ice cream is put in a special ice cream insulated bag, but still is soft enough you must sample it when you get home.  She has brought home meat wrapped in butcher paper, the price written on it in grease pen by the butcher, and veggies in paper bags, the price written on by the produce man, so the girl at the check out can read the prices, calling them out loud why she rings them up on the cash register.  Cash or check, not cash or charge, certainly not debit or credit.  She writes your mother’s license information in code on the check, and a carry out takes the groceries to her station wagon.  Dropping you off at the record store on the way home, for a new 45, someday you can afford the whole album, for now 59 cents is all you have, and hope you can listen to it on your parent’s console, after it warms up, your old 45 record player sounds so old.  Even the old hi-fi you sneak on is better, but the console sounds great.  And with a color TV, and radio, what is FM, you have a choice all in one piece of furniture.  Your dad bragging of how modern it is, your mother seeing it only as another piece that needs Pledge.

When you fall, your mother puts a Band Aid on your cut, after applying mercurachrome or iodine-ouch!  And hoping the Band Aid won’t stick pulling off the scab when healed.  You are still given St. Joseph’s Aspirin for children when you have a headache, aspirin or Bufferin is only for adults.  Vicks for when you have a stuffed nose, and Pepto Bismal after an afternoon at the drive in.  You get a booth inside.  And the house smells of Ben Gay after your dad works in the yard.  And soon it is time for bed, your new US Keds waiting to help you run faster and jump higher at school tomorrow, a note reminding you your new wind breaker is on the davenport, don’t forget it again, and to call Grandma when you get home, her number dialed is AD2-6541.  If she doesn’t answer, call back.  And if you have a problem, call the operator after dialing “0”.  In case of an emergency.  And other important numbers are on the note pad by the phone, with a pencil.  And as you anticipate watching the Flintstones tonight, the modern stone age family, you wonder how they ever made it without all the modern conveniences you have.  It must have been tough in the old days....

Everlasting memories of being a kid, you wonder what will your kids pass on to their children?  Will they know what an I-Pod is?  What language will they remember and speak?  God deals with everlasting also, a strange word in the Bible.  It has to do with time, but much more.  It is more than eternal, it has a certain mystery about it that goes deeper.  You can go back as far as your memories take you, everlasting goes back further.  You can dream ahead to all that might be, or is prophesied, but everlasting goes further.  Everlasting goes beyond any dimension or anything we can think.  Everlasting can only be used in the context of God and his love.  In the beginning, before the beginning was God.  Was Jesus, and he is everlasting in not only time, but his love for us.  It is called agape, a love only God can have, but we can be given, for it is perfect.  Without reservation or boundary, a mystery in itself, for no man can understand it.  It can be experienced, but cannot be described.  It is more than an emotion, and way beyond feelings.  It is God reaching down to us as we are, and loving us as he is.  It is not confined to situations,  to events, or moods.  It is not for certain people, but for all.  It is everlasting, and this love can only come to us through Jesus Christ.  And since God is everlasting, and his love is also, it is the same for all generations.  And will be into eternity.  We can experience the same everlasting love as David, Paul, Peter, Job, Jonah, and Joseph did.  We are all part of his everlasting, and even though we may not be mentioned in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews, we too can enjoy his everlasting love, mercy, forgiveness, and peace.  His offer has always been the same, it is up to us to say yes to God and no to sin.  We can enter into his everlasting love, he still loves us no matter if we don’t, but can enjoy all the blessings of love without bounds, of grace beyond description, and a future that never ends.  All based on a God’s love that also has no beginning.  No memory can go back far enough to remember, nor mind imagine the things of heaven to come.  He already has precious memories to come that we cannot dream of... are you ready?  Share that love of God today, everlasting is right now, and tomorrow and the day after.  But enjoy today, it is the tomorrow God promised yesterday, and more to come.  It takes the spirit to reveal the mysteries of an everlasting God, who can only be reached through Jesus.  The good old days are still here, what stories will you tell your kids?  What stories will they tell theirs?  Include an everlasting God and the stories never end.  I can almost smell the aroma of hi-test, see the NBC peacock telling us the next show is in living color.  Step into everlasting today...a wonderful future is yours to remember.  Only in Christ Jesus.

love with compassion,

Mike

matthew25biker.blogspot.com