The Book

Do you ever remember a time when, for no apparent reason, an assignment landed in your lap? That’s the premise for writing this. I cannot recall how this work took precedence. The title entered my mind with no warning. Hence, I cannot explain to you why I find myself compelled.

One of the earliest memories I have as a child involved a long drive from western New York State to the thumb of Michigan on the Lake Michigan side. I must have been five, maybe six. My paternal Grandmother remarried, and the Shepherds owned a cottage on the eastern shore of the lake.

Why would anyone build a dock only eighteen inches wide? It makes no sense to me now, but there it was. Appartently, getting to the boat I never saw explains the only reason the dock existed. During our brief stay my father determined to teach my two-year-older sister, Patti, and me how to fish. He purchased two of the cheapest fishing poles with reels I’ve ever seen, found some worms, and took us to the dock. My sister sat with her legs hanging over the dock on the right side and I assumed the same position on the other.

Dad proceeded to set up the leader, hook, and worm for me, threw it into the water, and commanded, “Don’t reel it in until you feel a bite.” He then proceeded to do the same for Patti. It didn’t take long until I felt a tug, so I cranked the line. No fish, so I called dad and pointed. He slid over, fixed the worm a bit, and added a bobber. “Wait until the bobber goes under.” He slid back over to tend to Patti’s rig.

Wouldn’t you know the bobber ducked out of sight! I reeled the prize in, only to find an empty hook. Now I’m learning dad’s not going to be happy with me. So, I put the rod over my shoulder and mimicked what he did to get the hook back in the water, but it wasn’t going forward. So I tugged a little.

Dad hollered, “Stop pulling!”

I turned to look, and he had hold of my line along with his right ear. The hook embedded in his lobe. It remains the only time I’ve ever thought about fishing for men.

In the primary Holy Bible carried by the majority of colonists headed for the Atlantic coast of the New World, the Geneva Bible in Matthew 4:19 states, "And he saith vnto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

How many of you, even though solidly Christian, ever caught a man? I imagine a few snickers as the women tap their husband’s hand.

The pattern became evident throughout my young life. One picture shows my maternal grandfather helping a friend who dad picked up to go fishing with me. Jimmy had caught a fish and grandpa Cook helped him land it. I may have caught a chub, but not a fish.

One of the least expected gifts my father gave me as a young teen turned out to be a nine-foot, three-section, split bamboo fly rod with an automatic reel. He had been an avid fly fisherman but gave all his stuff away some five years earlier. Now I was to learn how to place a little bitty dry fly in the center of a hula hoop. Rather incredibly, I did learn to do it consistently. But I had no idea how to think like a fish. I could cast overhand, underhand, with a roll, and sideways, but it never resulted in catching a trout.

Perhaps you can see why experiencing what Jesus taught the disciples became the farthest thing relative to my goals, even though I had already accomplished it.

These memories stand clear as day to me, yet God hadn’t forgotten.

At one point, as a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout, I earned the Protestant God and Country award. I see it every now and then when looking for other memorabilia. But the lingering memory fades quickly while a young boy.

One fact of life most never consider remains a significant part of my story. One’s frontal cortex, where thought matures, does not happen until at least the age of thirty. It explains why my conversations with my father never reached a connection until my thirty-second year of life in 1981. Oh, I respected him, obeyed him, and we had some plain understanding like the time he refused to accept the fact it took me longer to learn trigonometry than the teacher expected. The U for unsatisfactory work drew the exclamation I wouldn’t be playing basketball if the grade didn’t come up. Mission accomplished and basketball remained. Dad died five years after my maturing when we lived two hundred miles away. I was in the room with him when he expired.

I asked him some time before his death if he knew Jesus.

“I’ve made my peace with God.”

I won’t know until I get to heaven if dad is there.

The man who excels at catching men the Godly way, Pastor Robert Engelhardt of the Catskill Mountain Christian Center in Margaretville, NY, turned my life around as it demanded I focus on Jesus. While sitting under his leadership, my friendships matured. A Greek first, followed by a black man who sticks closer than a brother, and a Puerto Rican corrections officer who remains a solid connection resulted from over thirty years of Pastor Bob’s teaching. He caught me so well; Jesus’s other words call me to repentance.

If I may be so bold, I’d ask you the same question I asked my dying father. Do you know Jesus? Not simply knowing about Him. Scripture tells us even the demons know about Him. Take some time to understand there’s only one way to reach eternal life. It’s through The Book we know as the Holy Bible. Jesus said it. “I’m the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes unto the Father but by me (John 14:6).” Take it by faith, because you’re not likely to understand it in this life.

Birthing the Baby

 

Birthing the Baby

Warren A Johnson

©2015

 

Ashley Clark posted a take on writing based upon the painful experiences of the labor process during the birth of her son. I am not experienced in that side of the deal, but I’ve been around a few births. I have been exposed to the process by which nurses and OB GYN staff determine the quality of health of the baby during the process known as Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM). So, with the idea churning around in my brain, I thought I’d birth it for you here. If you are interested in learning more about the technical side of this and you have a smart phone, find the app called EFM Guide. It will explain the terms and physiology of what’s occurring at any given time on the fetal monitor.

            The first thing to learn concerns the process of EFM. No one has x-ray vision. No one can see your creation, your story. It will only come to fruition if you let it out. However, with the proper monitoring, one can tell the overall health of it. So, the first step is to apply the belly band around the mother. This device connects to the fetal monitor and shows patterns understood through observation. And, since birth is as much about the mother’s health as it is the child’s, we will also connect the mother to a heart monitor, We will watch her blood pressure, pulse rate and breathing rate. By discerning the increase in stress of the mother, we’ll know to look for like stress in the baby and whether or not the baby, like the mother, can recuperate from periods of stress.

            Although millions of people attempt to birth books, the successful ones I see plug into a venue to expose their efforts to people of greater knowledge and skill. This is the importance of writers’ conferences. Get plugged in. Dare to put your efforts up for observation. Let the pros discern your status. It’s for your own health and that of your creation.

            Since you are attached, so to speak, we’ll look at a few of the terms and what they mean to the baby. Fetal heart rate (FHR) refers to the predominant average rate displayed on the graph. The issue is that a baby in the womb experiences many influences changing their pulse rate. For instance, the baby may not like mom’s diet and the rate goes up. Mom may bend over and apply pressure to the baby and the rate goes down. The rate ranges from 90 to 200 beats per minute (bpm). What we’re looking for is the average baseline rate, generally expected to be around 140, ranging from 130 to 150, during rest or normal times.

            You experience any number of things throughout your day. Some of you may even have an hour by hour calendar so you know exactly when to write, when to do chores, when to go to the store, etc. If you don’t write during the proposed time, your baby suffers. If the cat plops on your computer key board, the baby suffers. If the older child falls off the porch rail, everything goes haywire until the emergency is under control.

            When the baby is excited, its heart rate accelerates. If the increase is over twenty bpm, it shows on the graph as an upward swing of the FHR. Accelerations are expected to decelerate as evenly as they accelerate. What you see is activity measurable by rate and time. An increase of fifteen bpm over a period of twenty seconds will show the peak at ten seconds and a return to baseline FHR at twenty seconds.

One day you’ll zoom through pages of text, moving right along on the plot and character development, and then it’s back to the grind. But that’s good! Realizing writing comes in spurts allows you to go with the flow and realize there will also be the work associated with normal activity.

In the same vein, decelerations occur. This time the monitor shows a depression of the FHR. It is always a sign of stress. Whereas an acceleration can happen from fun things, like receiving Brussel sprouts for lunch, decelerations occur from stressful things, like contractions mentioned previously. Again, stress is a part of labor, but the key is how well the baby recovers. We look at how low the FHR drops, how long it takes to get to its lowest rate, and whether or not it recovers to baseline FHR in the same time span. This pattern, equal time going into the depression and equal time coming out of it, is normal for babies.

Most of you know writer’s block will slow you down and you’ve overcome the illness. One way or the other you have taken steps to recover, whether it’s writing something else (like a blog) or brain-storming with cohorts. The issue is when your story is depressed you don’t let it stay that way. You get on with it. That’s normal life to a writer, so I’m told…

Accelerations and decelerations generally occur in association with the mother’s health. If mom’s heart rate goes up, chances are there will be a response from the baby and it will chart accordingly. If mom’s blood pressure changes significantly due to an event, the baby will be stressed, too. However, the OB folks also have terms like Early and Late Accels and Decels. These events occur, generally, because of events that are not obvious. These events are watched with a closer eye on the chart to determine if they are a) regular, b) predictable (able to tie the pattern to a cause and it repeats), c) whether or not they can be relieved.

Sometimes when we write, stuff happens. Stuff outside of normal or the occasional emergency discussed earlier. Most of you have had these experiences: bad health reports relating to significant diseases, loss of a loved one, hard economic times. Each of these will have an effect on your writing. That’s why Hemmingway always wrote in the morning. He knew that he’d be drunk by early afternoon and that all writing ceased at that time. I’m not advocating you plan that well for early decelerations, but you get it.

The last thing I think is important for you to know about this FHR monitoring is a major problem when the actual birth is occurring and it’s known as Shoulder Dystocia. The term dystocia simply means something abnormal. Many causes exist for this, but the inclusion of the word shoulder gives us a clue. When the baby starts down the birth canal, the preferred position is with the head preceding everything else. The baby also rotates so the shoulders end up with one toward the belly and one toward the spine. The baby faces either the left or the right side of the mother. This is the best position, considering the shape of the pelvic bone girdle through which the baby will pass. On the top of mom’s pelvic girdle lays the pelvic arch bone.

The problem comes when the baby’s shoulder closest to the mom’s belly catches, or hangs up on, the pelvic arch. Here’s the mom in heated battle with contractions going on, breathing heavily labored, she’s pushing to expel the baby and WHAM. The shoulder dystocia thing happens. The external sign observed by the OB folks is the head “crowns” (the top of the baby’s head is exposed through the vagina and is usually a sign of imminent delivery), but then it gets sucked back up into the birth canal (turtling—like a turtle pulling in its head). Holy smokes! Emergency! The birthing staff starts doing many things at this point. The FHR monitor is removed. The mother is placed in a number of positions to assist in relieving the pressure and to assist the baby in acquiring a better position for delivery. Someone will usually start by applying full body pressure on the pubic arch to try to effect a change in the girdle shape. Often the mother’s position changes to her hands and knees to alter the pressure points. All of these ensure the baby comes out as quickly as possible at the right time.

What we know about writers is unless they are tended by observant staff they will experience shoulder dystocia of an incomplete or unpublishable work. I’ve experienced this. I wrote my first novel about twenty years ago, but didn’t really have the interest in continuing with the writers’ conference route. Life changes, work experience, the economy and any number of other excuses kept me from pursuing the dream of publication. Then one day someone offered to publish it for three hundred dollars. What a pittance to pay for a book I could hold in my hand instead of looking at the manuscript in a box in the closet. I jumped.

It was the wrong thing to do. Yes, I have a book to hold. Yes, I had friends buy it. Yes, I gave many away and some even said they liked it and want to read the next one. It was premature and should have hung up on the way out! Now I know better. Now you do, too. Don’t get anxious. I have since learned God has my best interest at heart and He directs my path, if only I will follow him instead of getting in front of him. Thanks to many, I know I’m on the right path to publication, but it’s likely to be nine months from now.

My Testimony of God's Love

 

Testimony of Warren A Johnson

26 Dec 2023

For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10:13 NKJV

 

My Christian walk hasn’t always been sinless, but my New York pastor of thirty-five years, Robert Engelhardt, brought me to my knees in repentance. My prayer life grew and my confidence in faith solidified. Here in Spartanburg, Pastor Rich Butler of Hope Church, and God’s other servants, encourage the same lifestyle. I ride, blessed knowing who my God is, and He inhabits my being.

May I tell you a story?

On November 8^th, the sunshine fills a cloudless sky. Perfect for a weekday motorcycle ride after a summer of mechanical issues preventing such things. Traffic barely exists, and the leaves drop, but the fair breeze cleans the roads of their litter. Route 276 winds up the mountainside with hairpin turns and short radius bends around the rock outcrops to the Caesar’s Head State Park in North Carolina. The bike I’ve owned for fifty years performs flawlessly. My heart overflows with joy.

After a brief stop at the state park and a photo op, I enjoy the downhill run to Brevard, where I have lunch, fill up my gas tank, and head for home on the back road to Hendersonville. I approach a T intersection coming from the left, where light traffic enters my path of travel. My clear road surface shows no obstacles and I observe the entering cars to be sure they won’t collide with me. In that same stretch in front of me is a hard right turn marked at 30 mph. I’m confident with the bike and my mountain experience, and lean the bike over to take the right-hand curve past the new road construction at the intersection.

The Romans verse comes within the context of Paul explaining faith and the living under it. As my bible says, “They (the teachings) answer questions on how to be delivered from sin, how to live a balanced life under grace, and how to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.” I was about to experience this in real life.

Halfway around this curve in Brevard, out of sight because of the terrain and the flora growing on the inside of the bend, I discover an unmarked railroad track crossing at an impossibly oblique angle to my travel path. Iron rails mean disaster.

With oncoming traffic, the options flee. I jerk the bike upright so I can brake and hope to maintain enough control to avoid certain death in a head-on collision. The bike steering is out of control and I bear into the oncoming lane. A mere split second before smashing into the first car, I realize all my efforts will be for naught, and I remember Who is with me. I say one word. “Jesus.”

The responding paramedic came up to me to ensure I was the victim and there were no passengers with me. I stood calmly alongside the road where two young men assisted me to my feet. I knew my injuries weren’t significant, other than my hands hurt. After doing a quick assessment of me, looking at the bike and car, and back at me, the experienced medic says, “I’ve never seen anybody get up and walk away from an accident like this.”

I stand here today as a living testimony God’s grace exceeds man’s expectations. But you also need to understand even if your life isn’t Biblically perfect, the regular immersion in God’s Word, through the Holy Spirit within you, and under the corporate teaching of a dedicated church group, you have access to God’s redeeming grace.

A Name, a Rock, and a Church

 

Matthew 16:18 NKJV

“And I also say to you that you are Peter (first thing-renamed him), and on this rock I will build my church (second thing), and the Gates of Hades shall not prevail against it (the third thing-it- is the church).”

 

This discussion between Jesus and the disciples took place in Snir, in Northern Israel near Galilee at the Sanctuary of Pan, the pagan god known for causing mischief. It’s where we get the terms: pandemic, panic, and pandemonium. Google has an extensive post about this sanctuary and photos/art of the place as it was known in Jesus’ day.

While on a trip to Israel under the leadership of our pastor in Spartanburg, SC, we visited the site. Here is a photo of the grotto beneath the sanctuary. The rock is some 10-12 feet in diameter and sits on the floor of the grotto. It's at the bottom left center in the photo below.

Photo courtesy of biblewalks.com

Our small group meeting today before the church service we attend spurred a vision. The discussion led by a member of the group compared Simon bar Jonah’s path from the earthly life he’d led up to the point where Jesus renamed him Peter in Snir. The change went from self-centeredness to the one Peter is known for: focus on God, servitude, and forgiveness, amongst other attributes of a Godly way of life.

What occurred to me in a mental image is of an inverted pyramid over this rock. The sequence of things most often interpreted by preachers has Peter being the rock on which the church would be built. However, considering the 1-2-3 aspect noted above, it seems to me there is a separation between the naming of Peter and the rock Jesus seems to be pointing at, namely the one that covers the gates of Hades.

I have no scriptural references to quote. Perhaps you can assist me with that. What I think is there was an earlier time when the Gates of Hades in front of Jesus that day, remained open, and demons traveled in and out (or mostly out) of Hades through this portal. Then one time (perhaps an earthquake?), that large rock fell from the ceiling of the grotto and shut off the way new demons could be released. Hence, there was a limit as to how many demons satan could release into the world.

Christ seems to be indicating His church will bear down on this rock and prevent any more demons from escaping hell. If the church does its job, no number of demons will be able to prevail against God’s will.

It’s the church's responsibility to stand with God’s Word on that rock until his return. It's then we know he’ll make the final elimination of the entire rebellious lot known as demons and angels from hell, along with satan.

 

 https://www.biblewalks.com/Banias

What's That Manger?

What is That Manger?

37) On that last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38) He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. 39) But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, who those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. John 7:37-39 (NKJV)

This morning, while looking at one of the creches my wife displays this time of year, I considered the babe in the manger. Let me tell you what I think I know.

The accommodation for Mary and Joseph was a stable, as in a cave or protected overhang of rock. In it, cattle were fed and watered because there wasn’t a field for them to pasture with a stream running through it. Think downtown Bethlehem.

The manger we’ve come to know now, wasn't a wooden structure then, but rather a carved out stone object. Think about what that scene looked like. Hay strewed about. Cattle standing and chewing their cud while others lie content in their surroundings. But where was their water supply?

Consider what it would mean if an impervious-to-water stone manager was used to water the cattle, rather than to feed them.

Jesus, the Living Water, gets displayed to all who visit by the most fundamental visual of Christ. From shepherds to Wise Men, poor to rich, all who see Him learn from His very first parable. Come to me and drink.

This brings new revelation to me of how John 7:37-39 brings into focus the ministry of Jesus Christ from His birth.