Come to Me

by   June 11, 2022 with No Comments

By Doug Creamer

            My sister-in-law loves rabbits. The problem is that she is allergic to them. That does not diminish her love for them. My wife and her sister had rabbits as pets when they were little. Their father built a nice hutch for the rabbits, and they loved playing with them.  I have heard many stories over the years about their rabbits.

            If my wife and I see a rabbit we immediately think of her sister. A few months ago there was a beautiful white rabbit hopping around our yard. We knew it was a pet that had escaped and caught it. We put pictures on the community Facebook page and had many people who wanted the bunny. It found a nice home. I wrote about the adventures of that rabbit to my sister-in-law and she loved the stories.

            We have several wild rabbits living in the woods who visit our yard. They are allowed to visit as long as they stay out of the vegetable garden. One day I looked out and saw a bunny rolling around in the middle of my garden. I chased him away. Another day I looked out and saw two ears sticking up in the middle of my beans. I hurried out to my garden. I arrived to find a bunny trying to look innocent, but there was a bean leaf hanging out of his mouth.

            The bunny antics have continued, with a new white rabbit appearing last week. My neighbor hopes I will adopt it, and I hope she will. Meanwhile the bunny has been entertaining us. We look out for him every day. He has become chummy with the wild bunnies, who seem to have accepted him. I have sent several stories of the bunny antics to my sister-in-law, who has been enjoying the saga.

            The new white rabbit has obviously been around people. It will come right up to you. It gets just close enough that you think you might pet him and then he hops quickly away. My neighbor and I have both come within inches of touching the bunny before he scampers away. He doesn’t go far, just enough to be out of reach. If you move towards him he will take a few more hops and look back to see if you are coming.

            I have been thinking a lot about this game with the white bunny. He comes close but stays just out of reach. I think that many people are the same way with God. We want to be close to God; in fact, we will run right up to Him. Then, when God reaches out for us, we scurry away… not too far, but just out of reach. Why do we do that?

            Are we afraid? He is God. He is righteous and holy, and we are not. Maybe we are afraid He might expose something we are trying to keep hidden. Maybe we are afraid that He is going to catch us, only to reject us. Why do we run away?

            The answer is not simple. Some people have not grown up with a father, or theirs was abusive. Others grew up with fathers who were physically present but emotionally distant. Some fathers are workaholics and don’t spend time with their kids. Any of these experiences can leave us with a bad image as we try to translate that to our Heavenly Father. People in these situations believe the lie that their Heavenly Father is the same way.

            Others run away from God because they feel that they are unworthy of His love due to past sins or moral failures in their lives. These people believe the lie that Jesus’ blood is not sufficient for them. It may even be that they can believe that God might forgive them, but they cannot forgive themselves.

            The good news is that your Heavenly Father is not like your earthly father. Your Heavenly Father loves you unconditionally. There is no sin you have committed or mistake you have made that isn’t covered in the precious blood of Jesus. You are a highly favored child of God if you have accepted Jesus as your Savior.

            I want to encourage you to stop running away from God and allow Him to capture your heart. He knows everything about you and loves you more than any human ever could. If you feel you need forgiveness, just ask, because that work has already been done on the cross. He wants you close to Him. Stop resisting and run to Him. Let His love fill your heart.  

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com

Experts in Grace

by   June 10, 2022 with No Comments

By Roger Barbee

          An art dealer in Florida has been charged by federal agents with wire fraud, money laundering, and mail fraud. It seems he sold fake art works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and other well-known artists for millions of dollars. The dealer supposedly purchased one fake work by Basquiat on a website for $495 and sold it to an undercover agent for $12 million. His extensive fraud was uncovered after technology revealed the signatures on the art were false and examinations by art experts collaborated that the works were not originals. However, the dealer assured purchasers that he stood behind the work in his gallery 100 percent and that each purchase was a fabulous deal.

Forgeries have been with us, but the Internet gives the cheater easier access to those who may not have the knowledge to determine if an item is authentic.  However, what if the offering is not a concrete item like a work of art? What if the offering is a promise formed out of words from a respected community member like a teacher or religious leader? How does one not believe someone that is so revered?

In my career as a teacher of literature and writing, I would at times deliberately lie or make an outlandish claim to my students.(For instance: Romeo was too old for Juliet.)  I did this in order to teach them that a teacher was not infallible, and they should not accept as a cardinal truth everything a teacher said. In that small way, I was hoping to teach them that they were responsible for their educations. They had the text and were required to read it and draw their own conclusions based on the text.

Like teachers, religious leaders have influence, even power, over people. They can sway the way people think and act. Just as I did with Shakespeare, a religious leader can use a holy text to teach. However, what if that teaching is that all infidels should be killed, or the holy city of Jerusalem should be rid of all non-Christians. What if a religious leader taught that homosexuals deserve to lose civil rights or that only one political leader deserves a vote?

Christians have the Bible and its teachings. We can read and study the Gospels to guide us. We have the examples of Jesus. The written words of James, Paul, and other writers can instruct. We should read and study those lessons and upon hearing some “pastor” tell us that anyone not in agreement with what he or she shouts from the pulpit is to be despised and shunned, we should go to John 4 and read Jesus talking with the woman who was such an outcast that she had to go to  the village well at noon, in the heat of the day. But she, the Samaritan woman, encountered a Jewish man who spoke to her with kind words.

The Text is our expert guiding us in what we believe and how we act. That Text will reveal any forgery blabbering from a pulpit of lies and misinformation.

Party Time

by   June 7, 2022 with No Comments

By Lynna Clark

Nehemiah 8: 10-12- Very loosely paraphrased:

PARTY TIME!!! Break out the paper plates, not those flimsy, use 3 or 4, and hope the beans don’t leak through and run down your elbow kind. Buy the sturdy ones and the heavy cutlery. Everyone bring a covered dish, or two or three just to make sure there’s plenty! Something yummy like your grandma would’ve made. Don’t forget the sweat tea! And real fried chicken- crispy on the outside and juicy in the middle! Macaroni and cheese so thick you have to bang the side of the pan to get it off the serving spoon. While you’re at it churn up some ice cream for on top of the hot cobbler. Yummmm………..!

Nothing says celebrate like great food! They had worked so hard. Then came the worship. Next was repentance. Then thanksgiving. Now PAR-TAAY!

Hard work; Sacrifice; Giving; God’s Word; Worship; Repentance; Thanksgiving; Sharing; Preparing; Planning; Food; Fellowship; Joy; Strength; all because some people got together and cared about what God wanted, and prayed.

It’s a picture of us and our churches too!

If you’re in any church or close relationship very long, you know there will be short comings. If you hang tough and stay strong, you will experience the joy of family done well. Something about weathering storms together always draws us closer to each other. And we are definitely better together!

Dear God, please hold our church safely in Your everlasting arms. Carry us when we have no strength. Give us great joy in You. Help us to love each other so much that You are blessed. But when we get weary, and You know that we will, help us love You way more than any petty grievance that would separate us from each other. Thank You so much for the wonderful joy of knowing You, and for all the folks in our sweet church!

More:

“Always be joyful. Keep on praying. No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. Keep away from every kind of evil.” -1 Thess. 5:16-22

Getting Faster in Five Steps

by   June 6, 2022 with No Comments

By David Freeze

Most of the runners I talk to that are seeking advice want to know one of two things. The first group wants to talk about getting on track and keeping the momentum going. The second group wants to find out how to get faster. During my most competitive years, that was my quest every day. And in a different way, it is still my quest. In those earlier years, I read everything I could and talked to faster and more experienced runners about what worked for them. After more than 40 years of running, here are my suggestions if getting faster is on your mind also.

  • First, to get faster, you have to run fast. Sounds like double speak to many, but by this I mean that your body has to come out of its comfort zone in a portion of training. Usually, the perfect place is to get on the track once a week with a series of intervals. One lap at a time is my favorite, a 400-meter sprint as fast as you can run. If you haven’t tried this before, warm up properly and  do about six of these sprints with a short rest period in between. Then in the weeks ahead, add more reps and shorten the rest period. Try two laps and even four at a time, pushing yourself at the fastest pace to complete the distance.
  • Use your arms. So many runners today are lazy with their arms. Arms are momentum when done right. Bend your elbows at 90 degrees and pump them forward, not sideways and hanging down. Many coaches will say things like, “Your running will go as your arms do!”
  • Warm up when you want to run fast, whether it be for the intervals described above or for a race. One client knocked a minute off his 5K time by just including a warm-up that brought some sweat before he went to the start line. Here is what worked best for me: A good warm-up doesn’t have to include a lot of slower running but is much better when it includes a series of sprints. My suggestion is to run steadily for 5 minutes, then mix in a series of 60- to 100-yard sprints. Really pushing the legs fast, but just for 3-4 brief periods with just a slow jog in between. Once completed, jog to the last bathroom break, make any needed clothing changes and hit the start line. The difference is with this pre-race warmup, you won’t be warming up in the first mile. You will be racing it!
  • Make sure you are hydrated, so much so that the last bathroom break is just before the start. If you are hydrated well enough that you your pee is clear, then your cardiovascular system and the rest of the muscles will be ready for peak performance. Plenty of athletes who were ready to do well lost the advantage by not being hydrated.
  • And finally, increase your mileage so that body is not always pushing the pace at its maximum distance. I am one of those old-school runners that believes in a long run at least once a week. Always be able to comfortably run several miles farther than the actual distance that you are racing. A good 5K effort is more likely when preceded by a long run at least double that distance a week before. For me, I always wanted to know in my head that I could run the distance. I always advise running the distance and just a little bit more even when properly preparing to race a half or full marathon. One of my best marathons came several weeks after a 32-mile run, my longest during my marathon racing years.

Friday night is one of the most popular races in Rowan County, the Main Street Challenge 5K in China Grove. The 5K starts at 9pm and is run entirely on Main Street. There is a Tot Trot and Fun Run just ahead of the big event. Look for more information on this and other events at www.salisburyrowanrunners.org

Planting Hope

by   June 4, 2022 with No Comments

By Doug Creamer

            It has been a tough year for many home gardeners. We had some late frosts and cold spells. I was late getting started. When I had time, it was either too cold or raining. When the weather was good, I was busy with other things and couldn’t get to my garden.

            Over Memorial weekend I finally finished planting my garden. I put some things out at the beginning of May and they are up and growing. I saw my first tomato blossoms. I put in a number of seeds yesterday and now I am excited to see them come up.

            I am trying an experiment this year. I have four raised beds for my vegetables. I tilled two of them earlier. I never got around to tilling the others up. The leaves from last fall are still lying on top of the soil. I didn’t have time to till and I have heard people say it is better not to till the soil. For the remaining two beds, I just pushed the leaves back and planted. It felt wrong, but I had to get my garden planted. I will let you know how it turns out. 

            In one of those beds that I did till early I had hoped to plant my peas. I know peas like cooler weather. I never had the time to get them in. While I was working I was trying to decide if it would be worth it to plant the peas. I have the space and decided to plant them.

            As I planted those peas I thought about why we plant gardens. We plant them because we are hopeful for a good growing season and harvest. It’s hope that sends me out to the garden each day to see if those little seeds sprouted. I believe and am hopeful.

            I realize it takes more than hope to get a harvest. It takes watering, weeding, and keeping the pests out. We need to remember to add fertilizer and lime if we want the conditions to be right for a harvest. My mouth is watering just thinking about what will happen if everything works right.

            Hope is a powerful force. It drives me out there each year to try again. Some years are successful and I enjoy a bountiful harvest. Other years we get heavy rains and the potatoes drown. The rabbits, squirrels, and deer enjoy the harvest instead of me. But I will go out each spring because I hope that I will get to enjoy the harvest.

            Today is Memorial Day, a day that we remember all the men and women who went to fight and defend our nation and did not come home. One has to imagine that they gave their lives in hopes that their children and grandchildren could live in peace and harmony. They died as Americans defending our ideals and principles.

            Sometimes I wonder what is going on? One political party hates the other. How is that united? Families suffer from gun violence in our schools and communities. Where is the peace? There is social injustice in a land that was built on freedom and justice for all. We are divided over how to fight a virus that has claimed a million American lives. These and many other things divide us and keep us from what the people we honor on this day died to protect.

            But me, I like to find hope in the midst of the darkness. I think about neighbors reaching out to help one another in times of need. I think about all the people who rush to the aid of those who are suffering a tragedy, like a hurricane hitting our coast. I think about the many Americans who have gone to Ukraine to feed and clothe the refugees. I think about the many Americans who donate blood in times of tragedy. I think about the people who work with hospice to help in someone’s final days. I think about the police, firefighters, and EMS workers who come to help without asking or caring what you think or believe.

            I want to encourage you to look for the good in other people and to be a part of those who are planting hope. Love and hope have always defeated the darkness in this world. We need to focus on the good. For those of you who have lost family and friends while serving this great nation…I thank you and honor you. Let’s all work to change our corner of the world for the better. I believe that at our core we are a great nation filled with good people. God bless America, and fill us with faith, hope, and love.

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com

Culture Wars Abound

by   June 3, 2022 with No Comments

By Roger Barbee

The loud voices from every side that are involved in the oft referred to culture wars give me pause, and I remember the experience of my mother.

My mother was a divorced woman of six children in Kannapolis, North Carolina during the 1940’, 1950’s, and 1960’s. She hemmed washcloths in Cannon Plant #1 and attended a local Baptist church. It is that Baptist church during the 1950’s and its treatment of my mother that caused me to remember. While I was only a boy of only eight or so, I was old enough to hear adult talk and old enough to sense something was wrong.

A devout Christian, my mother took her six children to church twice each Sunday and every Wednesday night. She Believed and worked to make sure that her children Believed. The church we then attended accepted our presence in Sunday School and “preaching” and Training Union, and all else. However, my mother was told by church deacons that she would not be allowed to teach children Sunday School because she was a divorced woman. And, as one deacon strongly pointed out, the Bible taught against divorce, and it did not matter that my father was an abusive alcoholic who had deserted his wife and children. She was divorced, so no teaching children for her.

A few years after this ugliness, we moved to an in-town mill-hill house and began attending a Baptist church a few blocks from our new home. My mother confessed that she felt uncomfortable in a woman’s Sunday School class because she was the only divorced woman in the class, and she was often reminded of that either directly or indirectly. However, before long the church announced that an adult was needed to teach the children’s Sunday School and my mother stepped up.  Perhaps she was the only adult who volunteered to teach the class, but no matter, she began teaching the class and for the next fifty years she taught “her children” the Bible. When she retired from teaching the class, the church named the Children’s Sunday School wing in honor of her—the divorced woman who at one time was considered “unfit” to teach in her Baptist church.

All of this occurred over sixty years ago, and now, a divorced man, I have been a deacon and Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church. Some Baptist churches even have pastors who are divorced. There has been a cosmic shift and our culture survives. The issue of “divorcement” is not the only cultural change in these years, but it is the one I am most familiar with, and it demonstrates that things do change, and our culture can and does change as well. And we are no worse off for the cultural change.

For instance, many church attendees are quick to point out the sins of homosexuals. These church goers, while admitting “we are all sinners”, seem to condemn homosexuals because, as I am often told by church goers, “They continue their sinning life style.” Yet, the same church goers will admit  that every church is “Full of sinners”. But perhaps those sinners have a different favored sin than the homosexual– if one’s sexuality is a sin. In fact, I suggest we all have a favored sin, a breaking of a Commandment that we seem to gravitate to. Me? I’ve never met a woman that I have not liked, and I work at controlling that part of me, even at the advanced age of almost 75.  I once saw a church sign that read: “Don’t judge the other person because they sin differently than you do.” Amen to that.

What I find wrong in my mother’s ordeal with her first church and what she initially experienced at her second one is not what the Bible teaches, but how some deacons and church members interrupted its teachings. The Bible is a complex book that teaches simple truths such as “Love one another as I have loved you.”

All of this noise surrounding CRT, LGBT, BLM, and more will pass, but it will take its toll just as the “good deacons” did with my mother. But my mother knew that the battle was not about her, but one within each of the church leaders who were searching for an external enemy instead of looking inward, where the  greater threat stirred. Their names do not appear anywhere honoring their service to either chuch. But the divorced woman’s does.

Heart Rate and Why Important

by   May 31, 2022 with No Comments

By David Freeze

People who exercise regularly eventually get around to paying attention to their resting heart rate. Some even use the resting heart rate as a measure of how intensely they should push themselves in the next workout.

With my recent blood infection, kidney stones and stents, I had plenty of reasons for my own resting heart rate to go haywire. Earlier in the year, I had an angiogram, a medical procedure that takes pictures of how your heart is working. But for the procedure to work, either naturally or by medication, the patient’s heart must beat at less than 55 beats per minute. Thankfully mine did, something around 52 which I was proud of.

In my most competitive years, from about age 35 to 45, I could usually keep it well under 50 and sometimes in the lower 40s. My heart and cardiovascular system were at their healthiest and strongest during that time.

What does your resting heart tell doctors and why should we pay attention? Usually at the first meeting of our beginning runners class, I ask the participants if they monitor their resting heart rate regularly. Almost none have and few remember the last time they checked. But exercise enthusiasts, on the other end of the spectrum, monitor theirs regularly. The heart is just like any other muscle, and it needs work. By getting exercise and challenging your heart, it gets stronger and gradually will take less beats to do the same work.

I tell those in the class who often struggle at first that their resting heart rate will gradually decrease as they get fitter on the way to doing a continuous 3.1 miles. The same goes for cycling, swimming and all cardiovascular sports. Even lifting weights or doing pushups will strengthen your heart when done correctly. My pushups done in the morning are harder on my heart for a short period of time than running is. Such is the basis for the popular high intensity workout programs like HIIT, short in duration but very intense in methods and practices. Sort of like the difference between running 100 yards as opposed to a distance race.

Why does the resting heart rate matter? An increase in resting rate has been linked to an increase in mortality from chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cancer. Resting heart rate can be used as a low-cost, noninvasive way to assess risk for cardiovascular disease and the effectiveness of interventions related to physical activity. Young or old, a stronger heart and cardiovascular system will usually be linked to all kinds of positive happenings that you hear me mention often.

Other factors are connected to individual assessment like stress, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index. When a person who doesn’t exercise has a low resting heart, possibly the reason is a term called bradycardia, linking dizziness and shortness of breath to the low pulse.

An elevated resting heart rate of 80 bpm or higher can be an indicator of increased cardiovascular risk. The risk is most pronounced when the resting heart rate goes above 90 bpm. Resting heart rate varies by sex. Women tend to have smaller hearts and lower blood volume and hemoglobin, which means the heart needs to beat more frequently to nourish the body’s tissues.

A person’s average resting heart rate also changes throughout the lifespan, being much faster in infants and slowing by adulthood. The average ranges also change slightly as we age.

Resting heart rate can also be affected by any medications taken. For example, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers can lower your resting heart rate below 60, while medications to treat asthma, depression, and attention deficit disorder might raise it. Be careful here!

I have always heard that the very best time to check your resting heart rate is just as you wake in the morning before getting out of bed. But any time you deem yourself completely relaxed will work. Use a good quality blood pressure meter that also records pulse rate for easy monitoring. And if you get an unusual reading, check again before any concern. I keep the batteries working in mine!

Saturday is the Bare Bones 5K at Knox Middle School benefitting Relay for Life. It is open to everyone of all abilities with more information at www.salisburyrowanrunners.org .

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