Mama Liked the Chicken's Tail

 THE CHICKEN’S TAIL

           By Ada Nicholson Brownell

                                               

            When I was growing up, our family went to church most Sundays knowing dinner was still running around in the chicken pen.

            Whether we got out at noon or 1 o’clock, the family tackled the necessary chores to put dinner on the table. Dad or one of my brothers caught the chickens. Mom put water on to boil and went to the cellar for vegetables and fruit.  My older sisters, four of them until they started getting married, peeled potatoes and helped prepare other side dishes. Dad or a brother killed the fryers, dunked them in boiling water, plucked the feathers, and over an open flame burned off pinfeathers.

Mom washed and cut up the chickens, immersed them in flour, salt and pepper, and slithered the pieces into the frying pan.  The aroma filled the comfortable two-story house.

I helped set the table and fill the glasses.

            Often friends, relatives, preachers or missionaries joined the 10 of us for dinner. After someone prayed, Mom glanced around at each child and said, “FHB.” Translation: “Family Hold Back. Don’t take all the food before our guests have some.”

            Since I was the youngest, I usually got a meaty “wishbone” which you don’t see when you buy a cut-up chicken today. Mom always ate the chicken’s tailpiece.

 “I like it,” she’d say with a smile.

            It was a bony piece, and none of us liked the idea of eating the “last piece over the fence.”

            Years later, after I became a mother, I understood why Mom loved the tailpiece. It was because she loved us and wanted us to have the meatier parts.

            Sacrifice is just part of love.  Jesus gave us that example when he sacrificed Heaven and came to earth to suffer and die so that we could have eternal life.  “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

            I’ve always been a little like the chicken’s tail piece—last in many ways, and not the most beautiful and desirable.  But Somebody loves me anyway.

                                                            ###

LOST IN A SNOWSTORM OR GOING DOWN IN QUICKSAND?

My nephew, lost with his brother-in-law while tobogganing, had no idea which way would lead them out of the white mountainous area and back to the car. His desperation almost led him to burn the toboggan for one last bit of heat before they died. But his buddy insisted the toboggan was the only way they would get out and sure enough they kept climbing hills and sliding down the other side until the vehicle came into view.

 When we went exploring near our home in Colorado picking asparagus and hunting arrowheads my brother often spoke of quicksand. I’d heard Daddy warn about it, too. Given Colorado doesn’t have much swampy land the risk wasn’t great, but we did have many ponds, drainage ditches, canals and the mighty Colorado River. I’ve seen the stories on television about people who fell into quicksand. The more a person struggled, the deeper down they went. Rescuers often threw a rope to a person being sucked under because if they got too close, they would sink, too. Sometimes they had to tie the other end of the rope to a horse in order to pull the person out.

David, the Psalmist, wrote of sinking into the mire, but he spoke of spiritual mire. “Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mier, Where there is no understanding. Where the floods overflow me. I am weary with my crying; My throat is dry, My eyes fail while I wait for my God.” He wrote of enemies who would like to destroy him and then he begins to confess: “O God, You know my foolishness; And my sins are not hidden from You. Let not those who wait for You, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed because of me.... I am the song of the drunkards.” Finally he prayed, “O God, in the multitude of Your mercy…Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink..let not the pit shut its mouth over me.”

 Often David mentions his enemies. Today Satan is our worst enemy and he likes to trap us in the soggy mire of life’s temptations and problems. Quicksand has been known to swallow up buildings or at least make them fall over. Jesus spoke of the foolish man who built his house on the sand. The home fell and great was the fall of it. But the wise man built his life on the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word, and when the storms came, or the underground rivers that cause quicksand, the wind and rain didn’t affect that house at all.

 Today I thought about people the Lord has rescued from sin, but then they jump back into that life that can destroy them and perhaps those around them. Why would someone turn away from the vehicle ready to take him from the cold, severe snowstorm and certain death? My nephew certainly didn’t.

 Why would someone jump back into quick sand after being rescued? This weekend is Easter where we celebrate the Resurrection of the One who will rescue from sin and death anyone who wants to be saved. The Apostle Paul wrote about how it’s done: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

” Other places Jesus added “And come. Follow me.” Have you been saved and are you committed to following Jesus?

A loud instrument

We were at the altar call in a Wednesday evening service. I was playing a song of dedication softly on the organ.

            Suddenly the organ leaped to full volume.  I nearly fell off the bench and the pastor had a wide-eyed, surprised look in his eyes as he turned to look at me.

            The chunky high heel of my right shoe had slipped off the volume pedal and the shoe’s toe was stuck holding the pedal completely down. Finally, I had enough sense to take my hands off the keys to stop the deafening chord.

            Our wonderful pastor smiled, then went on with the invitation while I got my foot out and reached down with my hand to remove the shoe.

            That was only one of the times I embarrassed myself during ministry.

            In a church ministry preparation class someone said, “Be sure and examine your motives.  If you only want ministry because you want the rewards and applause . . . .”

            I started laughing.  “You won’t find a bunch of people lining up to shake your hand and thank you for the great job you’re doing when you teach a Sunday school class, especially one with a bunch of rowdy little boys,” I said.  “You won’t be given fame or fortune for many jobs you do for the Lord.  After about 40 years in various types of ministry, I’ve had almost as many embarrassing moments as I have people telling me how wonderful I am.”

          

         It doesn’t matter who notices, or even if we make mistakes, or embarrass ourselves -- if we

 have  properly prepared ourselves and done our best.

             But another thought comes to mind.

             In many parts of the world people risk their lives to tell others about Jesus and how He died to forgive sins so that anyone can live forever with Him. He sees. He knows. He even watches the sparrows and counts the hairs on your head, the Bible says.

             Those delivered from the brink of hell because someone ministered are thankful, as I am for the people who brought the full gospel to our house.

            If you desire to ministe, it's not even necessary to embarrass yourself, as I did that day when my shoe stuck.

               Incidentally, I didn't let that embarrassing moment stop me from using my talent to minister.

            “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

© Ada Brownell 2012

                                               

Mysteries of Life

In the morning, take a good look at your egg before you fry it. The mystery of life lies before you. If the egg was fertilized, before you broke it there was enough information there to boggle your mind.

God put DNA into the clear and golden slime of a chicken egg that blueprints the breed,  the ability to eat and digest food, the machinery to make more chickens, what color the feathers will be, how big the chicken will grow, the cluck and the crow, and beady little eyes that see—all sorts of wonderful things, just as he put amazing things in the eggs that became you and me.

Life. What a mysterious gift.

We see life everywhere, but we have difficulty grasping what it is. Scientists appear to have found ways to define death; they have more trouble with life.

The abortion rights and pro-life groups are at loggerheads over when life begins—whether it’s when the egg is fertilized with the sperm, when the egg attaches to the uterine wall, at a certain trimester, or at birth.

I interviewed the director of an agency that dispenses morning-after pills who said a woman isn’t pregnant until the fertilized egg attaches to the womb. The morning-after pill causes the woman’s uterus to shed its lining, preventing a fertilized egg from attaching and living. Abortion advocates say because the egg isn’t fastened to the womb, it’s not an abortion.

Other developments surround life. Human pregnancy was reported from artificial insemination in 1799. In 1952, frogs were cloned from tadpole cells. In 1970, mice embryos were cloned, then other cloned animals soon followed. Sheep embryos were cloned in 1979 and cattle in 1980. An adult sheep, Dolly, was cloned in 1997.

Cloning is the process of making an identical copy of something asexually with DNA fragments, cells, or organisms. In 1993, George Washington University researchers cloned human embryos, but there are no documented cases of a living human produced through cloning.

Test-tube babies, though, are somewhat common today. The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978 in Britain. A frozen embryo from test-tube fertilization produced a girl named Zoe in Australia in 1984. In 1986, surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead, who agreed to have an embryo implanted in her uterus so that another couple could have a child, refused to relinquish the baby girl and sparked a landmark court case.

In vitro fertilization is common today for infertile couples who can afford the expensive procedure, and often the births are multiple.

 All this work with living cells, yet humankind has not been able to adequately explain life or create it. We always have to start with something living, such as sperm and eggs, a seed, tissue, or a cell.

            According to Pasteur’s law of biogenesis, if ‘life comes from life,’ then life’s information must come from its parent’s information.

            “Biologists have long sought the laws that govern life, but it is only now that we see the molecular detail that these laws have appeared. What we discover is not a naturalistic phenomenon, but intelligent design,” says Alex Williams of Creation Ministries International in his article, “How Life Works.”

            The Bible says, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).

According to the Stanford School of Regenerative Medicine, the human body is estimated to have about one hundred trillion cells, a living community, with each individual cell having an assigned place to occupy and a specific role to play. Eventually something happens, even with all those living cells, that causes a person to die. Without life, every cell in the body dies and decays.

Death came because of sin (Genesis 3), but God promised a Redeemer. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

That’s why I wrote the book, Swallowed by LIFE. “While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:3–5 NLT).

Jesus said, “Whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:26).

Do you believe?

          

LIFE AND "THE MORNING AFTER"

When President Barack Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ announced employers, including religious organizations, must provide women’s reproductive services through insurance, the national debate quickly shifted from the morning-after and abortion pills, to traditional contraception.

 In media terms, that’s “spin” and the truth about the morning-after pill vanished.

 Obama is trying to make us think businesses and religions can opt out of the requirement. Regulators now solicit public input on how to implement the mandate—an appearance of openness while doing nothing.

I visited Planned Parenthood as a reporter, probably in 1994 or 1995, when I first heard of the “morning-after” pill being used in the United States.

The way I understand it, when the Food and Drug Administration wouldn’t approve the abortion pill RU-486 for use in the United States, Dr. Carl Djerassi, who helped develop the first oral contraceptive pill and founder of Planned Parenthood, decided a large dose of birth control pills would keep a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb, and thus he invented the “morning after pill.” Planned Parenthood began offering the treatment for women within 72 hours of unprotected sex, although the medication hadn’t been approved for that use and women sometimes had significant side effects.

 The morning-after medication causes the uterus to shed its lining, preventing a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb. The dosage also might cause a woman not to ovulate.

Planned Parenthood claimed until the fertilized egg attaches to the womb, the woman is not pregnant, and that’s true. But invitro fertilization shows a fertilized egg is pregnant with life before implantation in the womb.

Certainly not everyone who takes morning-after pills has a fertilized egg bursting to life and searching for a safe place in the womb. But some do—and that’s the reason for the pill—to prevent another person from entering this world.

Christians, among them Evangelicals, Catholics and many others believe “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in the Sixth Commandment includes the unborn. People are speaking out against the requirement, even after Obama transferred responsibility to insurance companies.

 The U.S. Catholic bishops noted the full range of contraceptives approved by the FDA that would be available without any co-pay under Obama Care included “drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.

Yet, because of the world’s exploding population, population control is a goal of many in government. The number of people on earth who need food is worrisome, but it’s not a reason to kill—or to force people, especially those whose conscience or religion forbids it, to assist with the killing.

 If killing were the answer to earth’s problems why do we worry about genocide in Syria, Ruwanda, and other places? We know in our gut it is wrong and horrific.

I suggest our citizens learn self control where sexuality is concerned, not population control.

                              

God created you with a soul--and loved you

Man with all his knowledge has never created anything that compares with the machinery in the body. Think about all the neat things about your flesh and bones--how the fingers bend in all the right places, and even though they are different lengths, they fold together into your hand so you can grasp things and make a fist to really get a grip.

 Think about all the organs and machinery inside your body. Evaluate the wonder of your seeing eyes, your hearing ears, and other senses. You have electrical circuits in your brain to help you think, learn and make decisions.

 As David said, we are beautifully and wonderfully made! But we also have a spiritual side.

 When God created Adam, the Bible says he became a living soul. The person you are, that God made you, is not flesh and blood. Watchman Nee, a Chinaman who did one of the most profound studies on the soul, wrote his evaluations  in his book, “The Spiritual Man.”

 The Bible says in Genesis as soon as God breathed life into Adam's nostrils and this life poured through the body, Adam became a living soul. Nee believed the soul is the combination of man’s body and spirit.  The breath of life became man’s spirit; that is the principle of life within him. The Lord Jesus tell us,, “It is the Spirit that gives life” (John 6:63).

 This breath of life comes from the Lord of Creation, Nee continues.. Before they sinned, Adam and Eve had the capacity to live forever. But they sinned and became mortal, meaning that they would be subject to sickness and death.

 God warned Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed him, they would be punished. Satan told Eve not to believe it. But God is a just God and in spite of his love for Adam and Eve, He took away their immortality (he'd warned them they would die if they ate of the forbidden tree) and caused them to be mere mortals who had to work, sweat and get sick and die.

 God wanted Adam and Eve and everyone who lives thereafter to know there are consequences for evil and rebellion. That’s still true today. We reap what we sow. God had made Adam and Eve in His own image, and the book of Genesis says God blessed them in spite of their sin. He gave man dominion and authority to care  over the every beast and bird

 The Lord made all sorts of things for humankind to enjoy. He gave us water to drink and swim in. Flowers to smell and look at. Furry animals to touch and love. Birds to sing and flap their wings above us in blue skies. The sun to warm us in the day and make things grow. The moon to light our way at night so we do things such as play Kick the Can.

 Every good thing comes from God. Love also comes from God, because God is love (1 John 4:16) And he loves you! God said his creation was very good, but when sin came into his wonderful world, there was a need for man to have a way back to holiness and purity -- and eternal life. God promised a Redeemer, Jesus Christ, way back in Genesis when He told Adam and Eve, in a prophecy that foretold Jesus would come and crush Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15).

 For nearly 4,000 years prophets wrote and preached about the coming Messiah, and one day H, Jesus,  was born in a stable in Bethlehem, fulfilling every one of those prophesies. According to both of the Apostle John’s books in the Bible (John 1:1 and 1 John 1:1) Jesus, the Word, God’s Son, was there at creation. Jesus is God, just like God the Father and God the Holy Ghost. And God’s love was shown for us in something that can never be changed when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead so that we could live forever.

 “What manner of love is this!” one scripture says. “Another verse says, “Greater love hath no man that to lay down his life for a friend.” That’s what Jesus did, and it shows God’s love for us better than anything. God loves you, just as you are and will always love you, even if you don’t serve Him. But He longs for you to give your life to Him, to accept Jesus as your Savior, and turn from sin. That’s the love story of the Bible, and it has a happy ending -- living forever with Jesus in joy and bliss.

©Ada Brownell

Swallowed by Life, the book, free for Kindle May18-20

The Kindle version of SWALLOWED BY LIFE: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal will be free on Amazon in the United States May 18-20.