What Are You Doing Here...?

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep. 
      
    All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

     The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night. 
      

    And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 1 Kings 19:3-9

Signs and symptoms of depression

Prolonged sadness or unexplained crying spells

Significant changes in appetite and sleep patterns

Irritability, anger, worry, agitation, anxiety

Pessimism, indifference

Loss of energy, persistent lethargy 

Feelings of guilt, worthlessness

Inability to concentrate, indecisiveness

Inability to take pleasure in former interests, social withdrawal

Unexplained aches and pains

Recurring thoughts of death or suicide

   
They say if you have five or more of these symptoms then you have clinical depression. It appears Elijah had changes in his sleep and eating patterns, was pessimistic, lethargic, anxious, feeling worthlessness and having thoughts of death. He certainly went into social withdrawal. 

I have not posted in almost a month. I haven't entered updates on Facebook and certainly haven't tweeted on Twitter. I even avoided church or socializing with people. I was considering closing down this blog. I had retreated to a cave.

It took me a while to realize that I was depressed. I should have recognized it immediately. After all I have dealt with the symptoms most of my life. My wife was diagnosed as a manic-depressant, what they now call Bipolar Disease, many years ago.

But I have never been prone to depression. I am an optimist. I’m one of those people other’s love to hate, a guy who wakes up early and happy about it. It’s not I never get down.  Long gloomy days can sap my energy and there were periods in my life when bad things knocked me down.

This time was different. There was a spate of rainy weather that didn’t help, but nothing one could point to as “seriously bad”, although I am currently in a perfect storm of unsettling changes.

It made me wonder, did Jesus get depressed? I decided to research this.


Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." Matthew 26:36-38

I found several essays and sermons claiming that Jesus had suffered from depression and they all cited this passage from matthew 26. Does this show that Jesus was depressed?


Jesus was both human and Divine. As a human, I believe he experienced the emotions we all feel as well as the temptations, hurts, joys and all that is human...except depression. I do not believe Jesus was ever depressed.  Sorrow, even deep sorrow, is not synonymous with depression. heart-retching sadness could key a bout of depression, but doesn't always. The passage quoted is the night of His arrest, the eve of His Passion. He has went to a quiet, private place to pray. He took three Apostles with Him, but left them on the perimeter so he could pray alone. He told them he was deeply troubled and asked them to keep watch. But other than an expression of this sorrow, I don't see the signs of depression here.  Let's see the whole event as told in Matthew.

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me."

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked Peter. "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."

He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."

 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!" Matthew 26:36-46

Look again at the nine symptoms of depression. The test is if you can apply five or more of these to a person, then they are in depression. Can you find five that fit the description here? I can't find one.

He certainly isn't indifferent or lethargic. He doesn't show feeling of guilt or worthlessness. Is he indecisive? No. He went off alone to pray, but is hardly in social withdrawal since he keeps returning to speak to the Disciples. Certainly he had thoughts of death, but that was His purpose. At the end of the passage He is alert and ready to go. 

But there is something here that gives us the reason why Jesus never suffered depression. His focus is on the will of God. 

Now I am the last person who'd claim depression is because someone is out of the will of God. My wife, remember, has suffered greatly in her life because of a chemical imbalance in her brain which throws her moods into turmoil. There are clinical reasons for depression.

In my case I don't have such an imbalance. I am like Elijah. I took my eyes off God and looked at self. I took too much on myself, felt overwhelmed by it and headed in a desert and ended up in a cave.

Being Christian does not bring us life without troubles and sorrow. It is not wrong to feel sad. We are still flesh and blood in this world and it is possible to fall into depression. We find people in Scripture who were caught in the cave of depression.

 I needed only to look to the title of my Blog to be reminded of one such person.

By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? 
Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?"

 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

Why are you downcast, O my soul? 
Why so disturbed within me? 
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:8-11

There is the way out of depression, putting hope in God. Pray this is where I am at and that I have taken steps out of my cave into the guiding light of the Lord.

We need to set aside our own voice and listen so we can hear God ask, "What are you doing here?" Then we can move on down His path.

Gunfighter and the Garden

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. Romans 7:40 


When I was a young Christian I viewed bearing fruit as if I was the new gunslinger in town. The purpose of the Great Commission was to face down the unbeliever at the OK Corral and see how many notches I could put on my belt, or perhaps on my Bible. Listening to some people speak about winning souls made it seem we were bounty hunters always wary of spotting our prey everywhere we went and ready to bring them in to the sheriff.


Then came a period of uncertainty. Perhaps I was not a very good Christian (maybe not one at all), because I couldn't go to meeting and brag about the souls I saved like some others seemed to do constantly and continuously.  Perhaps I was like autumn leaves without fruit, twice dead.


How ignorant and arrogant was I. It is not the souls I save that constitutes my fruit. It can't be, because I can't save souls at all. I couldn't save my own soul, what makes me ever think I could save yours? No man can save another's soul, not I, not you, not Billy Graham in his heyday.


Only God can save a soul. All we can do is tell them so they hear and if they believe we can disciple them. We do that, we have done what we can. So put away the six-gun and forget the notches. If you are bragging on how many souls you've saved you have lost yourself in pride and self-acclamation.

But when [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 3:7-10

But what is this fruit we might bear to God? I mean, this sounds serious when every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and burned. I certainly want to be a fruit bearer, but what kind of fruit?


We are told in Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."


I will tell you at this point of my Christian life I have at least the blossoms of all these. I will say some are actual fruit, not fully shaped or ripe, but recognizable.  


Shall I also tell you how hard I have worked to cultivate these beginnings of fruit? About all my selfless labor, my hours of concentrated effort? Not likely, for what I have in fruit is not my doingat all. I'm so likely to allow a weed to grow to choke me off from the vine, so prone to forget the water my fruit needs or too easily distracted by the "fruit for death" my flesh once bore.


Yet, when I am lured to those old dried up prunes, then I remember the world is watching and I am now bound to display healthy fruit.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: 
   "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5:8-14

Our fruit reflects light into the darkness of the world. The light we reflect is the light of God through Jesus Christ. If we have no fruit to provide that reflection, then we must question our Christianity. 


So how do we assure our fruit will grow and develop? How to we get the Fruits of the Spirit? Exactly like the pumpkins in the illustration with this post. We are not the fruit, we are the branches on which it grows and in order for the branch to live and bear fruit it must be attached to the vine. Our fruit will not grow and could shrivel and die if we do not keep in constant contact with the vine, and what is the vine?

"I [Jesus Christ] am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other. John 15:1-17

Trust and obey the Lord and your garden will blossom.




Illustration was taken at Monticello, Virginia, September 17, 2007

We the People...and This Here Person

[This is a piece I wrote that appeared on another Website back in 1999. It seemed befitting to reprint it here.]

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I thought it might be well to mention that this site supports free speech.  Apparently this kind of statement upsets some folk.  I refer anyone upset by the idea that someone supports free speech to the quote at the beginning of this eruption.  It is the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and it may just be the most important few words in that document.

For anyone who drifts by here who does get upset when they read that this site supports freedom of speech and begins to conjure an assault upon their tender eyes from a sty of vile language, or perverted sexual images, or manic outlines for reaping violence against people, places and things, be assured one will not find such here. This site would be rated PG at worst.

I would say this site would not contain comments or words that are offensive to anyone except it is impossible for anyone to make that claim.  There is always someone, somewhere who is offended by the most innocuous statement or interprets a comment wrongly and takes offense.  I can’t prevent this from happening anymore than anyone else can, unless I were to say nothing at all and present blank pages to the world, and if that were to be happening, then we would know there is no more freedom of speech.

If I ever write something that offends, I hope you will take the time to examine why it offends you.  I can assure it wasn’t intended to offend.  Everything expressed on these pages is opinion, and you can agree, disagree or be indifferent to it, but you shouldn’t take it personally.  If something does offend, well frankly you have a right to be offended!  If you give up your right to be offended, then the rest of us must give up the right to speak freely, and once that happens the rest of our freedoms will also soon be surrendered.

Remember, when you open someone’s site and you read something that truly offends you...you don’t have to go back there anymore!  But you should at least consider what the person is saying, should form some ideas why it offended you, should form some ideas of why you disagree, should form some ideas about why you are right in your thinking and they are wrong.  And if you are concerned about the reaction of children to any content, for gosh sake discuss it with your children and make it clear to them what is wrong with it.

There use to be a quote: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.^” This was a paraphrase of a statement written by the Frenchman Voltaire to a M. le Riche: “Monsieur l’Abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”  The truth is once we begin to decide we can put limitations on what can be said, we have destroyed freedom of speech.

I would also say, so what if someone writes a diatribe of invective against a people, a race or a religion?  Doesn’t that say more about that speaker then those spoken against?  The object must be to cut through the emotional reaction to words and cool them off with logical argument against such ideas.  If the ideas expressed are that of my enemy, I would still rather know this is my enemy and this is what she or he thinks, then to have my enemy banned from my view where they are busy planting verbal daggers in my back. 

Freedom of speech is our right by the Constitution.  It is the way we have to express ideas, good or bad, and place them in open debate.  It is the one weapon we all have to protect our other freedoms, and it is the power of such a freedom that makes many groups, and politicians, and others wish to limit speech and dictate what is proper to say.  You may hate what someone says, but when someone can speak against you, and you can speak against him or her, then you know for a while you are still free and safe.   When you must guard your expressions and avoid certain subjects is when you are in danger. 

There is reason to feel in danger today.

Just a Note or Two About My Other Blogs

As some know and other may guess, there are more Blogs on my shelf than just, "Night Writing in the Morning light."

I have just spent the last several days doing some housekeeping and adding to one of those. This is one I ask my gentle readers to visit occasional (because it is a lot of work to do) as I struggle to a goal I set earlier this year. That was to develop a harmonized, narrative, annotated combination of the four Gospels. (Nitewrit's Own Harmony @ www.nitewrit.info)

I was a little careless as I began it, so I went back and standardized the color coding to the Scripture Texts, corrected a couple errors and added a few new comments here and there, plus added a couple more posts.

It is slow going. I have just finished up through Jesus finding his first Disciples, which occurs in John 1:35-61, so you see I have a long road ahead on this journey. But I think there is some interesting information in what is done and, of course, my own opinion of these events. This is both a work of love on my part and an educational exercise for me to draw closer to the Lord.

Another Blog I set up at the beginning of the year 2009, is "Night Writing in Twenty-oh-Eight". This consists of all the posts I did to "Night Writing" in 2008. I just though that Blog was getting very long, so I put last years post into a separate spot. If you weren't reading my Blog last year or have forgotten some of what I wrote, you may wish to go to www.nitewrit. org and take a look. (For some reason in Blog Lists the post from Thanksgiving 2008 shows as the last posting in this Blog. It isn't.)

In "Night Writing in Twenty-oh-Eight" are such posts as "Could God be a Preacher in your Church?", "As a Christian Bees Won't Sting and Colds Won't Catch (Yeah, right!)" "God's Sex", "Philemon: Phabulous Examples of Pellowship" and such series as, "Do Animals Go to Heaven", "Seven Sufferings", "To-Do About To Do Lists", and "Russelling of the Fig Tree", and as they say on TV, much, much more.

I started to turn the posts from 2008 into a book, so that has become another effort I have been working on lately. Anyway, I just am asking my readers not to forget my other Blogs.

Thanks

Tuff Stuff: Suffer the Children...

And then they [who] were there brought unto him young little children, also infants, that he should put his hands on them, touch them and pray: but when his disciples saw it, [they] rebuked them that brought them

But when Jesus saw it he was much displeased, [and] called them unto him and said unto them, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven -- the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”

And he took them up in his arms and laid his hands on them and blessed them, and departed thence. (Matthew 19:12-15, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17)

My last post (Real Nightmares - 9/19/09) ended with the death of a child. She wasn't my child, but the sister of a friend and because she died going from my home, I felt guilt. The associated shock, nightmares and the guilt of the event eventually faded into the miasma of time.

The illustration on this post is the edge of a tombstone. It was for a baby who died at birth. He was the only child of an older cousin. I was very young myself when this happened, but I remember going to her home. Everyone was acting strange. They only spoke to each other in whispers and no one would tell me what was going on. People were crying. I was scared.

My wife and I were to endure seven tiny deaths of our own. Four were miscarriages, three - Sean, Michael and Amy - died at birth. It is not easy to lose a child, but perhaps easier so early, before you have known their personalities, seen their aptitudes or heard their laughter. But it is still hard.

And it is natural to wonder where did they go?

Oh, sure, I was once an Atheist and perhaps those few real Atheists don't ask that question, but most people hold to some belief in an afterlife. Thus I think for the majority of people, they ask that question.

My answer is such children are in Heaven with the Lord.

The Apostles asked a question of Christ on different matter once:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." Matthew 18: 1-6

You might say, and rightly, these verses and the ones quoted at the beginning of the post, don't say young children who die automatically go to Heaven. But they show God has a special love and protective attitude toward children..

Yet, I don't base my premise on these verses. I base it on these:

But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, "The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, 'The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.' "

Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."

In spite of this, you did not trust in the LORD your God, who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.

When the LORD heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore: "Not a man of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your forefathers, except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the LORD wholeheartedly."

Because of you the LORD became angry with me also and said, "You shall not enter it, either. But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to inherit it. And the little ones that you said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet know good from bad—they will enter the land. I will give it to them and they will take possession of it. But as for you, turn around and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea." Deuteronomy 1: 26-40

Probably most people who heard the story of the exodus know the Hebrews wandered about in the wilderness for forty years. They certainly know some of the events, how the Red Sea was parted as they escaped Pharaoh's army, how Moses went up the mountain and God wrote the Ten Commandments into stone and how Aaron carved a golden calf and the people danced about it. We've seen all that in Cecil deMille's movie, "The Ten Commandments". We all know Moses looked just like Charlton Heston. But you want to know something, that stuff all happened in the first year.

Granted they hung around one spot there at Mount Sinai for that year, but it is only about 200 miles from where they left Egypt to Canaan. If they only walked five miles a day it should have only taken them 40 days, not forty years. God was leading them. Was he lost. I've had some Mapquest directions that took me the long way around, but forty years of wrong turns. Naw, God didn't need Mapquest and he didn't miss any turns. When they left Mount Sinai, God led them on a beeline right to the Promised Land and said, it's your for the taking.

Except they didn't have faith. They were afraid. They said those fellows over there are too big for puny little us. They forgot God is bigger than anyone. They turned down the offer. And as a result, they never got to enter the Land of Milk and Honey. That's is why they wandered around in the desert for Forty Years, until every one of those who refused God's gift of Canaan dropped dead (with a couple exceptions, Joshua and Caleb) and the children.

So tell them, 'As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very things I heard you say: In this desert your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. As for your children that you said would be taken as plunder, I will bring them in to enjoy the land you have rejected. But you—your bodies will fall in this desert. Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert. Numbers 14:28-33

Although the children, and here we find children defined as those from o to 19 years of age, who also didn't enter Canaan when it was offered, are viewed by God as innocent by their youth -- "your children who do not yet know good from bad—they will enter the land".

There is a picture of us coming to salvation in the Exodus. Like the Hebrews, who were slaves in Egypt, we are in bondage to our sins. Like the first Passover lamb, Jesus shed His blood to pay for our sins and the Word of God goes before us offering us salvation and entry into Heaven if we only except Hist gift. If we lack that faith, then we will die in the wilderness of our sin and not set foot in the Promise Land.

And if we accept the model of the Exodus as a model of God's offer of salvation, then we can accept the special Grace shown to children.

At that time Abijah son of Jeroboam became ill, and Jeroboam said to his wife, "Go, disguise yourself, so you won't be recognized as the wife of Jeroboam. Then go to Shiloh. Ahijah the prophet is there—the one who told me I would be king over this people. Take ten loaves of bread with you, some cakes and a jar of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what will happen to the boy." So Jeroboam's wife did what he said and went to Ahijah's house in Shiloh.

Now Ahijah could not see; his sight was gone because of his age. But the LORD had told Ahijah, "Jeroboam's wife is coming to ask you about her son, for he is ill, and you are to give her such and such an answer. When she arrives, she will pretend to be someone else."

So when Ahijah heard the sound of her footsteps at the door, he said, "Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why this pretense? I have been sent to you with bad news. Go, tell Jeroboam that this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I raised you up from among the people and made you a leader over my people Israel. I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you, but you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes. You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made for yourself other gods, idols made of metal; you have provoked me to anger and thrust me behind your back.

" 'Because of this, I am going to bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. I will cut off from Jeroboam every last male in Israel—slave or free. I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns dung, until it is all gone. Dogs will eat those belonging to Jeroboam who die in the city, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country. The LORD has spoken!'

"As for you, go back home. When you set foot in your city, the boy will die. All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the LORD, the God of Israel, has found anything good. 1 Kings 14:1-13

I've seen it said Abijah died as a punishment on Jeroboam. This is not how I read it. It is true God promised disaster on the house of Jeroboam, but the LORD spared Abijah by letting him die as a youth. God found good in the boy, but apparently the state of Israel would be so evil it was better to take the boy out of it than allow him to grow to rule over it. I doubt God would have spared Abijah from the curse put on the males of Jeroboam to condemn him to the worse curse of Hell.

Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."


 Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die."

After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.

On the seventh day the child died. David's servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, "While the child was still living, we spoke to David but he would not listen to us. How can we tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate."

David noticed that his servants were whispering among themselves and he realized the child was dead. "Is the child dead?" he asked. 


"Yes," they replied, "he is dead."

Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate.

His servants asked him, "Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!"

He answered, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, 'Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.' But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me." 2 Samuel 12:13-23

This was the first child David had with Bathsheba, the offspring of that adulterous affair which resulted in murder. But the death of this baby was not a punishment on the child, but on David. Otherwise, God would be going against His Law: Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin. Deuteronomy 24:16

Now one could argue that David's statement to his servants merely means David will go to the grave as did his son; however, it is clear from David's life, and especially his Psalms, that David understood resurrection and salvation. No, I believe it was not just an acceptance of "that's that and nothing I can do about it, so I'll just get on with my life". I think David's ability to eat and snap back is because he knew that he would go to his son eventually, and to do that his son would also have to be in Heaven. And a child dead at birth has no opportunity to ask forgiveness.

But God is big enough to take to Himself those who have no ability to hear, understand or accept.

I believe someday I will go to those seven children we lost.

My grief for those children is for what I missed in not having them in my life, not for the life they missed, for their life is better than mine. My fear is for the children who are living and grown into the age of understanding. For the children who die too young we grieve for what we lost; for the children who die too late, we grieve for what they lost. Pray for all we children of the world that we do not die too late.

Real Nightmares

The cowboy me, smiling at the dangers of the trail, ready for that bronco of a bicycle to buck me off into the marsh, ready to stand firm in the middle of stampeding railroad trains. I stood up to the challenges of the wilderness I existed in. I had faced down a growling, angry dog (well, actually I fled in abject terror, but why besmirch my adventure image now). I had my trusty companions by my side, Peppy and Topper. I had the daydreams of a blossoming Frank Buck.

But what of the nightmares.

Like the mist that rose in early morning across our marsh, nightmarish images can appear on the brightest days. They can blight a snowy road with a spray of blood or turn a summer flower into a siren of doom. And the most nightmarish aspect of all is they are real, they can't be changed and they claim squatter's rights in a back room of your mind.

Yes, we lived back behind a swamp in the middle

of what was nowhere at that time. It was an insulated world in many ways, but it did have a great connecting link to civilization. We were

beside the great Lincoln Highway.

The Lincoln Highway, Route 30, also called in our parts, the Lancaster Pike. We were tied to the breadth of the country by that road, which began in Times Square, New York City and ended in Lincoln Park, San Francisco, California.

The Lincoln Highway has been probably as dominate a landmark throughout my life as the

Brandywine Creek. It seems to me it's been

around forever, but it was just twenty-some

years old when I was born. It started out being named the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway and was the brainchild of the man who also gave us the Indianapolis 500 Speedway and Miami

Beach, Florida. Carl Fisher [pictured on left] looked out one day in 1912 and realized with the growth of automobiles there was a need for a

good road. He decided to build one coast to coast with the help of money from the automobile makers. Henry Ford didn't see the point and without Ford money it seemed a doomed dream, until Henry Joy, head of the Packard Motor Car Company suggested naming it after Abraham

Lincoln. This struck a patriotic chord and eventually funds were raised and the highway completed.

And my first nightmare image appeared on it in the first winter after I moved to the swamp. I rode a school bus to school. It was late afternoon on the trip home. There was snow across the fields, a drifting here and there even across the well-traveled Lincoln Highway. The sun was bright, it glistened on the white of the fields and also off the lanes of the road. The bus slowed, as traffic in both directions had and we moved slowly pass the cause that lay on the center lines on the side to which I sat. A dog had been hit, it hindquarters crushed, its blood and other smearing the white. It struggled to get up, but couldn't, never would.

We passed, moved on. I do not know, will never know, if anyone stopped to tend the dog or to put it out of its misery. There was no carcass the next day, only the stain, so someone took it away somewhere. Beyond that I cannot know its fate anymore than I was ever able to erase that scene from my vision or my thoughts. Perhaps it was an omen.

Although I have been speaking of the isolation of this period, we weren't on a desert island somewhere. The house and land belonged to the owners of the hauling company my dad

worked for and their terminal was a quarter mile or so up the highway toward the east. The terminal was across the highway and set back. Opposite it' s entrance drive on our side was a small apartment building. I suppose most the tenants worked for the hauling company. My father and mother socialized with two families who lived there. Joe Bender and his wife remained long time friends of my parents. They had a daughter, Dot, but she was older than me. (She was in a later time and place to become my babysitter and even later, she and her husband became friends of my wife and me. Those are stories for later times.)

The other family was the Humes. They had a son, Tom (he was the model for Thomas in "Ground Dog Day"), but he was even older than Dot. He wasn't particularly interested in being a playmate to a 7 year old. So when my parents visited with the Benders or the Humes, Dot or Tom spent time amusing me, but beyond that they were as invisible as anyone else in my day-to-day world.

Further up the highway their lived eighty or ninety boys, none of whom were my age. It would have mattered little if there were. This was the Church Farm School (now known as CFS: The School at Church farm). It was a boarding school started in 1918 by the Reverend Dr. Charles W. Shreiner of the Episcopal Church. It took in boys of lower economic circumstances and gave

them a college prep and religious education. The students helped pay the cost of this by working the farm belonging to the school. As far as I know, this is still the case on the 1,600 acres of farm, school buildings and dorms.

But those boys were as insulated and isolated as was I. They lived in their self-contained world and I never saw them. That school could have been a hundred miles away in another state for all it touched upon my life.

Between the Church Farm School and the apartments was a factory, White Motor Company.

Based out of Cleveland, Ohio, the company made a variety of mechanical tools and vehicles. It manufactured sewing machines, roller skates, lathes and bicycles.

As you can see from their logo on the left, they also were once automobile makers.

The company existed from 1900 to 1981 as the White Motor Company. This particular plant of theirs between the Church Farm School and our swamp made trucks, perhaps their most famous product.

Running alongside the truck factory just before the Church Farm School were a row of small houses. The first was next to the highway, then they ran back along the driveway of the factory, sitting up on a high ridge. The outer edge of this ridge toward the truck plant was covered in gravel.

I do not know how we came to meet, but living in one of those little homes was a family with kids my age. Perhaps the events which occurred later that summer have erased some memories from my mind, because I cannot remember the family name or the name of any individual member. There were four children, three boys and a girl. The girl was the youngest. She may have been four years old. All the children were close in age and the oldest was seven or eight. I didn't know them until halfway through June of the year we came.

The reason for this was their father had been killed in the war (World War II). Since those little homes were company houses, I suppose either he worked for White Motors before his death or the mother was working there then. The boys were students at the Milton Hershey Industrial School. Yes, the same Milton Hershey of Chocolate Bar fame. Milton and his wife, Catherine [pictured on the left and she looks as if she ate a lot of Milton's chocolate], established a boarding school in 1909 for orphaned boys. It provided care and education from pre-kindergarten through Twelfth Grade for boys in need (today this includes girls). Besides an education, Hershey provided for their clothes, board, nourishment, health care and career counseling.

Since we moved to the swamp over Christmas vacation at the end of 1947, the boys were back in Hershey, Pennsylvania by the time we settled in. But I did meet them somehow in the summer of 1948. Sometimes they would come down to my place and sometimes I would go to their home. I remember an instance at their place that summer.

I do not know who built it, but there was an underground structure atop that ridge amidst the houses. We used to use it as a fort or a hideout in our games. Once as we ran about in a game of war atop the high embankment, I slipped on the loose edge and fell face first down the gravel side to the drive below. I didn't feel hurt, but when I pushed my self up I felt a twinge in one hand. When I looked down, that hand was covered in blood. I had a strange reaction to my wound. I felt embarrassment. I didn't want anyone to see it, so after climbing back up the embankment, I stuck my bleeding hand into my pocket and hid in the underground hideaway.

I don't know who found me and took me into their house, but I remember their mother telling me to take my hand out of my pocket. She then washed it and dabbed it with iodine or mercurochrome. Which ever it was, it stung something fierce. After the cut healed I was left with another inch-long scar, this time running along the creases of my palm. (This was not to be my last battle scar of childhood.)

Summers fly by for children. It came time for them to leave again for their other life in Hershey. The boys came down to my place for one more day of play and they brought their little sister along. Late in the day, they left to go home, walking down our long lane, then up the shoulder along the Lincoln Highway to their house a quarter mile away.

My mom was outside when they left. We heard the screech and squeal together and my mom began to run down the lane. I followed behind, but before we reached the highway, she stopped me and told me to stay where I was. She then walked up the road where I could see traffic was coming to a stop.

Walking home, the oldest boy had noticed wild flowers growing on the bank across the pike. he wanted to pick a bouquet to give their mother. He had been leading their sister along, now he gave her hand over to one of his brothers and told the boy to hold on to her because she wanted to go pick the flowers, too. The older boy crossed. His sister struggled, but her brother held her tight, until she bit his hand and he let go.

She ran out into the traffic lanes and was struck and killed.

I don't know what happened to the family after that summer. I didn't see them the next year so I assume they moved away. How sad to lose your husband and then your daughter. How awful to lose your sister that way. (Strangely, this scene was to repeat itself a couple years later.) I don't know how those boys dealt with the guilt they must have felt because I know the guilt I felt in her death was heavy enough. They were going from my home, from visiting me, when it happened. I wish my last memory of them wasn't the sound of car brakes skidding on a highway. I wish I could remember their names.

The portrait of me at the top of this post was a detail from the one here. It is from the same year we first moved to Glenloch (1947), but was taken next to my grandparents house in town during a visit.

There was an itinerant photographer who came through town. He supplied the hat, bandana and pony. This guy must have got around [note this was marked as 479 on the stirrup]. Almost fifty years later, when I was working for the bank, the subject came up. So many of us around my age had similar pictures, we decided to have a "Pony Picture" day. All of us brought in our old photo and there was a display put up. Lot of little kids in the same hat, same kerchief on the same pony were hanging on the wall. That hat must have been plopped on so many heads it's a wonder we hadn't all shared heads full of lice. Maybe the guy cleaned the thing every time.

From the Snows of the Himalayas to the Rails of Sudden Death

There were four bedrooms on the upper floor of the swamp house. My parents had the master, naturally, although my mother slept alone four to five nights a week depending upon my dad's schedule. I had the back east-corner room for sleeping. The other back bedroom, the west, was my playroom.

Ah, there are advantages to being an only child. Not only don't you have to share a bedroom or bed, but where there is a spare room, you can claim it as your sanctuary and spread out your toy trucks and soldiers. You never have to squabble over territory or maneuver for your mother's attention. You can't blame your sibling for your misdeeds either, but those who have that opportunity probably get caught in the lie and doubled down on the punishment.

This left one more room upstairs and this became a store room, not that my folks had very much to store. There were, however, some things stacked in the middle of the room that caught my attention.

There were tall mounds of comic books. I don't know how many, but at least two piles as tall as I was. Considering their thinnest, even in the days when they bragged of having "52 pages", that was a lot of comic books. They must have been my dad's, I know they weren't my mother's and I doubt some previous occupant had left them there.

These were an eclectic collection, somewhat historic even then. If I had them now I could make a small fortune on eBay. There were among these publications the originations and first adventurers of some of the superheroes still in print today, Superman and Batman. There were also comics of characters probably no one remembers, because there were some of the earliest comic books created in those piles. There were comic books in black and white and there were comic books that were collections of the newspaper strips of the 'thirties.

Although comic books were to play a roll building relationships in my near future, it was the other pile in that room which grabbed my attention. These were strange books. They

were an inch or so thick, but not very wide or high. When you flipped through there were a lot of illustrations, even stills taken from movies. Some books had famous names and portraits on the covers, others had garish scenes of World War I fighter planes in combat or cowboys chasing stampedes or beautiful damsels in distress. These were called "Big Little Books" and there were a ton of them.

They belonged to my mom and I began asking her to read them to me at night. I found I could read along with her well enough that soon I was spending hours myself honing my reading ability. I was especially drawn to the adventure books, the explorations of unknown parts of the world. I was most enthralled by several baring the name "Frank Buck" on the cover. Frank Buck was famous once. He was an actor, a writer, a trainer for the Ringling Brothers and even more impressive an explorer who captured wild animals for zoos and circuses. He was known as "Bring 'em Back Alive" Buck.

Here was this man traveling the world; here I was stuck alone in a swamp. He brought home lions and tigers and hippopotamus in cages; I brought home tadpoles in jars and snakes on sticks. People celebrated what he brought and paid to see the beasts; my mom always made me dump my menagerie back in the marsh.

She couldn't stop me from growing up someday and when I did, that's what I'd be, a world-renown explorer. I'd go on adventures in darkest Africa, searching for King Solomon's Minds or lost tribes of headhunters. And after hearing about some strange creatures on radio, I decided I would be the boy...uh...man who would capture the Yeti.

There is irony to such a goal for me. The Yeti, better known as "Abominable Snowmen", did not lurk on some savannah in Africa or hide in Amazon Jungles. It dwelt in the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas. You could only reach the Yeti with pickax and rope and Sherpa guides.

And I was afraid of heights.

This fact did not daunt my dreams of capturing the Yeti someday. But I think these books inspired me to more immediate boldness in exploring the surroundings of my own backyard. It was those explorations that brought me to the place where for the second time I almost died at that place in the swamp.

Remember the cornfield behind the house, the hill where I used to sled. I was told never to crest that hill. I was a boy and alone. Who would ever know, so of course, I did. After all, Frank Buck would have went over that hill to see what was on the other side. So one day I went up and over the ridge.

Beyond the top was a gully cut through the hills in which was laid the mainline of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Past these tracks was nothing to see but woods. I crossed them anyway.

There were two sets of rails parallel to each other, one for the eastbound traffic, the other for the west. As I crossed I could hear the trains. One was coming from each direction toward each other and I was in a gravel strip between the two sets of rail. I froze, afraid to move when I saw them closing upon me from the distances. Soon they whizzed by me, front and back, blowing my clothes and hair, and the scream away from my mouth. As quickly as they had came, they were gone, and I ran across the remaining rail bed and dashed home where I never mentioned the incident, never, ever, until now.

I never crested the hill again, but I had dreams about those trains off and on for years. I had dreams where they blew me over, battering me between them, and dreams where they sucked me under the wheels, and dreams where an object sticking out from one of the railcars sliced off my head. I carry an edginess when on train platforms to this day.

Yet, that stupid stunt was an adventure to treasure in a boy's life. Those train dreams weren't the nightmares that really came to haunt my sleep. The bad nightmare's came from the highway.

The first two illustrations are stock photos of a Big Little Book and a Frank Buck Flyer.

The third photo is not a Yeti, but a heavily doctored photo of a late friend, Tommy. It was not taken in the Himalayas, but in the Poconos (1975).

The last illustration is a stock photo taken near where I lived. It is of a Pennsylvania Passenger train on the mainline rails. The trains which had passed me were freight trains and much longer.

Snippet Scenes

The memory of life in Glenloch plays like a movie trailer in my mind, not of coming attractions, but of a short subject long over. Snippets flash by, hints and teases, abbreviated scenes that sometimes please and sometimes haunt.

Perhaps long exposure to isolation exaggerates winds in the night or hones observation in the day; perhaps in loneliness is the soil for a writer's imagination. Or perhaps realities in such a life cause a boy to seek comforts in the peace of a field or the fantasies he wished to believe. I know one Christmas Eve, in the

dim and quite hours pass midnight, I heard the whoosh of Santa's sleigh circle that house. And on a cold and early Easter morning, when fresh snow had settled across the lawn, this child found the bunny tracks that came to the side window, then away from where the rabbit entered to leave the basket of jelly beans and coconut creme eggs upon the dining table.

When you have heard St. Nick or trailed the Easter Rabbit's route, how can you not extend belief? Who is there to tell you different? But if those mystical moments can be conjured up clearly, so the scenes of real life are as well.

I can still picture the silent snows of those winters or the butterflied and flowered fields of quite summers.

In the spring, grass grew high across the cow pasture, speckled with yellows and blues of wild flowering weeds. The ground was split by a narrow stream within a deep crevice where I dropped in petals to watch them float or followed crayfish down stream. I never tried to catch these strange creatures, which reminded me of scorpions with their little claws. I would never have considered eating such a thing, but I did pluck and sample the watercress that lined the banks.

In summer there were cows in that field. I don't know from where they came. There was nothing much around, no sign of barn or farm.

There must have been a farmer somewhere, for corn grew on the steep hillside behind the house. I don't recall the planting, but I experienced up close and personal a fall harvest. Some men came with odd machines and one man let me ride in the cab with him. I remember a contraption in front swept over the corn, crushing down the stalks. As it did the cobs, still wrapped tightly within their leaves and silk came whizzing out a tube over the roof of the cab into a truck bin behind. Occasionally an errant missile flew through the open side windows and I would react to pick a bird: duck or grouse.

It took a few hours of one fall day and they were gone and I don't remember them ever coming back. Broken stalks rotted across the hillside forever more and when I toted my sled up I had to stay along the fence line or be thrown by the rough and treacherous traps of crushed cornstalk. It was while sledding down that tree line I found my dog, Topper. *** (If you care to know how that happened, go to my "Night Writing in Twenty-Oh-Eight" Blog and read my December 14 or 15 post called, "A Sequel to 'Passing': 'Ground Dog Day'". "Ground Dog Day" as a short story is a thinly disguised description of my getting Topper.)

In getting Topper, my dad showed the care and dedication he had to doing right, characteristics I seldom recognized as a child. My dad and I did not have an easy relationship. I just think we never quite understood each other. My viewpoint of my father is probably illustrated well by another instance back in that swamp.

On my eighth birthday I received a bike, my first two-wheeler. It was a "twenty-six" incher, meaning the wheels had 26 inch diameters. This was the standard, normal bike size of that time. They had "twenty-four" wheelers, but I had the big boys' bike.

There were no training wheels then. My dad took me out to what we called our front yard to teach me to ride. The trick to riding is learning to balance. He held the bike as I climbed onto the seat. There was a flat rack over the rear fender. I suppose it was there for tying on packages to carry or allow a second person to piggyback a ride, but in this case it provided a handhold for my dad to keep the bike upright. He told me to push the pedals. The bike wobbled a bit and I grew nervous, but he assured me he would not let me fall over. "I'll be right behind you holding it up," he said.

My feet slipped off the pedals at first, but finally I was pushing them down effortlessly and moving in a circle about the little plot of land at the edge of the swamp. This was fun. Then I

grew tired. "I want to stop," I yelled back to my father, but we kept going. I didn't know how to stop, I was depending on my dad to halt the bike and hold it up until I got off, yet he didn't respond and pull me to a halt. "Let's stop,' I said and I looked back over my shoulder at my dad, except my dad wasn't there. I don't know if he had left seconds before or minutes, but he had gone back into the house and I had been peddling along on my own quite well; at least until that moment of discovery. Now I lost control. My front wheel began to quiver and I fought to straighten it up and still not knowing how to stop I went over the little embankment and landed in the marsh.

Dragging my dripping body and bike up to solid ground was when I stopped trusting my father.

It mattered little, because my dad was seldom around. His trucking took him away most days of the week. Although he was there the first day I almost died.

I awoke one morning. The sun was shining brightly in my bedroom windows. I threw aside my covers, anxious to get up, but as I swung my legs off the bed I was struck amidships by a sharp pain. I fell to the floor with a scream. It was loud enough it brought both my mom and dad scurrying in where they found me in a ball on the floor, howling and crying. My dad scooped me up and they drove the eight miles to the hospital where I had been born. I was taken for immediate emergency surgery.

I had come very, very close to suffering a burst appendix, which would have most likely resulted in peritonitis and my demise. They didn't have the antibiotics to fight that condition back then.

I was in the children's ward, long lines of beds full of kids with various problems. I didn't like being there and I didn't like the nurse, who I saw as mean. They didn't sew up the incision, they clamped it shut with staples. Removal was a form of torture. If I had had any secret information, I would have told them all.

I missed almost a month of school. It took awhile to walk comfortably again. When I went up and down stairs I had to step with my left leg, then carefully ease my right down or up to the same step than repeat. I was left with a long scar this time, perhaps three inches long, but it was at least in a spot that didn't show.

I didn't mind missing the school. In truth, I feel I missed all that particular school. I remember nothing about it. I drove there decades later and photographed it, but nothing came back to me. I can't even find the report cards for that period. I have all my others from all my other schools. If this were a horror movie there would be a deep, dark secret that happened at that school. Is there? Will some long forgot goblin pop through my brain someday?

I probably had little interest in what was taught anyway. I had discovered a wonderful thing in the fourth bedroom of that house, the one we used as a storage space. What I found in there made me think about the world beyond the swamp and gave me my first ambition, the first pursuit I thought I would someday accomplish.

*** I had three pets when living in the swamp. Peppy is the Toy Fox Terrier I'm holding in the first photo. My grandfather had given her to me when she was a pup and I was six. I also had a white rabbit named Snowball. She was kept in a above ground hutch back in my mom's garden. I think she had been an Easter gift as a kit, a practice I don't approve of today. But we took good care of her. Topper became the third, discovered by me in the rows of trees between two fields that ran down the hill behind us. Topper was one of several puppies left in a groundhog hole to perish, but my dad dug them out and rescued them. That is me playing with Topper in the middle photo. (You can go read the story of how Topper was discovered by clicking on the title of this post.)

The bottom photo is West Whiteland Elementary School which I attended over a two year period.

Swamp Rat

I turned six in June 1947. At the time I lived with my mother and her parents on a quiet street of a small town. The photo is how the town looked at that time. You are looking toward the north.

The town was in a valley of the Brandywine Creek. In the 1940's there were wooded hills or farm land surrounding it. There were none of the malls, rows of fast food and chain restaurants or housing developments that stretch from small town to small town today. In the 'fifties they would build a farmer's market to the east of town, but that wasn't there yet in 1947.

My little block was quiet and had a splattering of kids my age, those of us born just the other side of the "Baby Boomers". Apparently I was a gregarious child or so my mom has claimed. I spent plenty of outdoor time with several friends and I guess I tended toward speaking out in public. One time at the shoemaker's shop (that seems such a quaint thing now) there was a man with some sort of skin discoloration, perhaps a large birthmark or a burn scar. I blurted out, loudly, something like, "look at that man", embarrassing my mother and grandmother. (I sometimes wonder if my extensive psoriasis was some curse for my youthful rudeness.)

But sometime in that period my father mustered out after serving during World War II. Before he had joined the Navy, his job had been as a stoker in a steel mill. Now he wanted something different and heard from a friend they were hiring at a trucking company out along the Lincoln Highway. His friend told him, "don't tell 'em you know mechanics or you'll never get out of the garage." My dad's dad had driven a delivery truck for the family store, so my father applied as a truck driver and got the job. It paid $100 a month plus the house.

Ah, yes, the house, there is the rub. It meant we had a place of our own, my dad, mom and me. It also meant we had to move out of the small town to several miles east, out past the busy little crossroads called Exton to a place called "Glenloch".

Glenloch had once been the 684 acre estate of a man named William E. Lockwood. His mansion, which still stands, a sort of spooky ghost from the past, out along Route 30, a dark and brooding stone edifice to opulence and gothic charm. It had been build in 1865-68 and was designed by a renowned Philadelphia architect named Addison Hutton. He was the man known not only for his prominent homes, but also for several libraries, hospitals, courthouses and schools. He designed the Ridgway Library, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr Colleges and Lehigh University.

This mattered little to a six year old being torn from his little town home over Christmas vacation to the desolate remains of a long forgotten estate. No, we weren't moving into that famous mansion, now known as Glen Aerie. We were going a bit further east to a house in the middle of nothing in particular. It was surrounded on one side by a marsh, very brown and half-froze in the winter we arrived and festooned with cat o'nine tails and red-winged blackbirds in the summers. It sat well back from the highway, down a long double lane little more than some hardscrabble and gravel tracks. To the west stretched a barren cow pasture and beyond, running up a hill, the broken wasted stalks of cornfields.

The house, itself, was large inside, or in the perspective of this child it was. There was an eat-in kitchen, a dining room, a living room downstairs; four bedrooms upstairs. It had these very wide windowsills. I use to lay on these sills, curled like a cat, peering out on the emptiness.

The exterior was a mess. The house was cinder block that someone had begun to stucco over and quit halfway. The scaffolding still stood along one side of the building, the piping rusting, the boards warping and the structure would sing and sign in the winds.

During the week, it was my mom and I. The trucking job my father took was driving milk tankers long distance. He was to be a long distance trucker most all his life. He was seldom home. He was a weekend husband, and not too much of that time was given to being a father. In fact, the usual routine was to deliver me to my grandparents on Friday evening and take me home after Sunday dinner at their place.

I'd usually see Billy and Iva when I was back in town on those weekends, but most of my time was spent alone. I strode down the long lane to catch the school bus and went to West Whiteland School. I remember nothing of that school, not the teachers, not my classmates. It is a blank in my mind I can't explain. There were no kids my age who lived near me year long. My mom and I dwell in isolation during the week because she didn't drive in those days. I had to learn to be comfortable with just myself for company.

When your days are spend scooping tadpoles and snakes from a swamp or following crayfish up a winding stream, when you wander in the woods alone, sled down wagon rows alone, or invent games in your playroom along, you lose your gregariousness. A hermit becomes introspective and withdrawn. You don't develop social skills in an human-less landscape of bullfrogs and skunk cabbages. Notice there is no one else in these photos but me.

There was a period when there was someone my own age, a brief span within each year when we would play like normal children, but even this was to have its tragic conclusion.

Good Old Golden Rule Days

There was a time when parents raised children most of the time and not institutions. In that period during World War II, not much after the Great Depression, there wasn't much in the way of daycare or after-school programs. There wasn't what you would call organized activities for kids. Some moms went off to work (you've heard of the song, "Rosie the Riveter"), but many were still at home. Most of the fathers were off in the war somewhere.

My dad was serving in the South Pacific with the Navy, scanning ahead of the convoys for submarines on a destroyer escort. My mom and I lived in a small town with her parents. My world was restricted to one block.

We lived directly cater-cornered from the elementary school, yet I wasn't sent there to kindergarten. I was sent off to a private kindergarten clear across town, and not at age five, but at age four. Why? I don't know. Perhaps they just wanted me out of their hair a while each day. I remember someone came by each day and picked me up and brought me home. I don't know if it was Mrs. Helms, who ran the kindergarten, or some mother of one of the others.

I believe I enjoyed kindergarten. I really don't remember much about it. I have on my desk a large hunk of coal, lacquered and decorated with colored spots of paint. This was a project we made. For a long time I carried another memento of that project. We had been taken out to the rail yards behind the town train station where we gathered the pieces of coal and we were at one point up in a meadow above the tracks. Perhaps I was running or we were playing tag, I don't recall, but somehow I fell into the barbwire fence between the meadow and the railroad and a barb pierced my left cheek. I wasn't given stitched and it left a one inch scar on my face. I was like those old Prussian aristocrats who proudly bore saber scars across their cheeks as a symbol of their class. I was the aristocrat soldier of Mrs. Helms' Kinder class.

I like to tell people I flunked sandbox and had to repeat kindergarten. I did go two years, but for bureaucratic reasons, not academic. My mom tried to enroll me in first grade, but because I was only five they refused to allow me entry, so she sent me back to Mrs. Helms for another year.

The photo up top is the class during my second year. This is probably where I met one of my early close friends, Tim. Tim is the boy kneeling in the front row to the extreme right. I am kneeling to the extreme left. Perhaps you can tell that I was the tallest in the class even though on my knees. The photo to the right is Tim (left) and me, budding Major Leaguers. Tim is really choking up on the bat, down in a Ty Cobb crouch. I'm more upright breaking a cardinal rule with the bat resting on my shoulder.

Another feature of that kindergarten photo is its reflection of those times. Notice we are all grouped together except for one girl off on the right by herself. The girl's name was Blossom and there was nothing much different between her and the rest of us except her skin was a darker tone. I suppose it was actually somewhat progressive that Mrs. Helms had an integrated kindergarten. You won't see any thing but white faces in the photo of the East Ward kindergarten of the same year. There were black kids who went to East Ward, but at that time they were all taught together in basically a one-room school separated from the rest of us.

I had two guys who were my best friends in those early years. Tim was one and Billy was the other. Here are the three of us in 1946. Tim is at the right, down in that stooped batting stance again. I'm in the middle. I was a catcher when I first started playing baseball for one very important reason. I owned a catcher's mask.

The boy out of uniform, and just about everything else, is Billy.

I had several birthday parties then. You may notice something about my parties. Yes, even then I had an eye for the ladies.

Here I am turning five. Tim and Billy are on either side of me and then there is my bevy of beauties.

The girl just behind me was my best friend even before Tim and Billy. Her name was Iva and she was a petite redhead. In those early years, I was a redhead, too.

Here is a party a couple years later and Tim isn't there. Billy is the boy in the striped shirt. I am on the right. The other boy was Denny, who lived in an apartment on the other side of the school in those days. He was later to move into the house Billy then lived in after Billy moved. I am looking down kind of over Iva's shoulder. The blond girl

directly in front of me was Mary Jane and I carried a torch for her right into Junior High School. The girl standing next to Denny is Judy and the dark haired girl sitting just in front of her was Toni. I forget the name of the other girl.

After two years in kindergarten, they finally allowed me to go into first grade. No one needed to pick me up anymore, we lived right across from the school. This was East Ward.

It was a stone building. It had these porches on the side with stone walls and stone pillars tat made for great forts. In the back was a macadam area where we would ride bikes and roller skate. Off to one side was a playground with swings, Jungle Gym and seesaws. there was a ball diamond on the other side.

In first I had a teacher named Mrs. Warren. I remember her as a tall, stern woman who kind of scared me. She had a method for getting your attention or keeping order. She would pull hair. If you weren't paying attention, she would come up behind you and ...yank...ow!

Teachers could do such things then. They could spank you if they wished. I remember there was a supposed "enforcer" that the principal had. I never saw it. No one I knew had seen it. But everyone had heard stories about it. It was a paddle, but it had holes drilled in it to increase the pain when struck against our tender bottoms. No one wanted to face the "enforcer".

By the time I got to first grade I could already read well. When I was called on to read about Dick and Jane chasing after their dog, Spot, I did it with the emphasis such an adventure deserved, and Mrs. Warren pointed out to the class this was the way a story should be read. First year and already establishing myself as a teacher's pet.

I seemed a happy enough kid back then, with several friends and a good start in school. Then something happened that changed everything.

My father came home from the Navy and moved us to a swamp.

Martha and Mary: Spectulations Part 15 - Last Piece in Place

While Jesus was in Bethany, he [was] reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. A woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard, which she broke and she poured the jar, the perfume, on his head as he was reclining at the table. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

When the disciples saw this, some of those present were indignant, saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste?" Why this waste of perfume?" they asked. "This perfume, it could have been sold at a high price for more than a year's wages. And they rebuked her harshly. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor. It was worth a year's wages." He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

Aware of this Jesus said to them, "Leave her alone," said Jesus. " It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. Why are you bothering her, this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want, but you will not always have me. She did what she could when she poured this perfume on my body beforehand. She did it to prepare me for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."

Then Judas Iscariot one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?"

They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. So from then on he, Judas, watched for an opportunity to hand him over. Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him. (Matthew 26:6-16, Mark 14:3-11, John 12:2-10)

Jesus had come down to Bethany to this dinner party with twelve associates. These were the men he had chosen early in His ministry to learn and carry on His message. Some shared similar background, knew each other, were even related, yet there was still diversity in the group. Some had been fishermen, indeed, in the fishing business. They or their family owned boats and had others working for them. Matthew was in a more despised occupation among the Jews; he was a tax collector. Nathaniel Bartholomew seems to have been a man of higher standing then perhaps the rest. Simon (not Peter) was a member of the Zealot Sect, someone who might even be considered a terrorist. Some like Peter were ready to jump into things before they thought about it. Others like Thomas perhaps thought too much and became doubtful. Several were followers of John the Baptist and several were looking for the Messiah.

But they did have one thing in common. They were Galileans; that is, all except one. Galilee was to the north in Israel. Jerusalem, on the other hand, lay in the south in Judah. Jerusalem was the Big Apple of the day. The people in Judah thought themselves sophisticated and urban. People from Galilee were hicks and they were recognizable when they came south because they had country-boy accents.

Oh, except that one. That one guy not from Galilee would have fit in down south because his roots were in the city of Kerioth. He was a city boy from the south himself and his very name was the Greek form of Judah. He was known as Judas Iscariot - Judah, a man of Kerioth.

We don't know a lot about the Man of Kerioth's background. Perhaps he was more formally educated than the other eleven. Perhaps he just had a head for figures, but he was given the important duty of group treasurer. We would have expected that job to go to Matthew, after all, he had worked with money and accounting in his profession, he had the experience. Of course, Tax Collectors were known for their corruption and dishonesty then, so maybe they really didn't trust Matthew to hold the finances.

(Frankly, if you think of it, we'd have probably expected Simon the Zealot to be the prime suspect in betraying Jesus. I mean, come on, he was a Zealot. A Zealot is someone with an excess of devotion to a cause. The Zealots wanted to overthrow Rome. And remember, we are looking backward from ahead at Jesus. These guys were behind looking ahead. Their view of Messiah was a king who would restore Israel to freedom and glory and the splendor of David and Solomon, not a sacrificial lamb. You'd think that if anyone might be getting impatient and upset with Jesus it'd be Simon the Zealot. Shows what we know and you can't tell a book by its cover.)

Not so long ago, Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave. This caused an upset with some Jews and with those in power. That was the final straw that resulted in the decision by the Sanhedrin that Jesus must die and they were offering a reward to anyone who could lead them to Jesus in private, away from the crowds who adored Him. They just needed that one little last piece to complete their plot.

So here we are at this dinner party and this young woman destroys this very valuable jar of perfume. She pours it on Jesus and He says it is a wonderful thing she did.

And Judas is sitting there calculating all that money that jar of fragrance would have fetched. He used the cover of concern for the poor, but he was thinking how much he could have skimmed off first. How do we know? Because it is right there in Scripture. John tells us Judas was thinking about the money because he was a thief who had been dipping into the common purse for his personal gain. So many times things are spelled out for us in the Word, why don't we accept it? Why centuries of argument over the character and the motives of Judas? What have we been told elsewhere? A person cannot serve God and mammon, a man cannot serve two masters, for he will love the one and hate the other.

We say how could Judas do what he did after spending three years by the side of Jesus? How many people have you heard of in your lifetime who are close to the Gospel and betray it? How often have we heard of a minister of some renown who yields to temptations he has preached against his whole career, whether from pride, greed or lust?

Think about this: other of the twelve would refer to Jesus at various times as "Lord" or "Master" or even, "the Son of God", but never by Judas. To Judas He was never more than a "teacher" or "rabbi", never referred to as anything beyond a wise man, just like many today refuse to accept the Divinity of Jesus, but call him a "good and wise man".

When Judas left and went to the Chief Priests did he express outrage about what happened? Did he say Jesus is a phony, he doesn't care about the poor? Did he say I was duped, this man isn't the Messiah? No-o-o-o! he says, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?"

They gave him 30 pieces of silver. It is difficult to value what he received. He was given silver coins. It has been stated this was the equivalent of 120 Roman dernari and this was about three months wages at that time. Not really a great amount. It has also been said he sold Jesus for the price of a slave.

"If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull must be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull must be stoned and the owner also must be put to death. However, if payment is demanded of him, he may redeem his life by paying whatever is demanded. This law also applies if the bull gores a son or daughter. If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull must be stoned. Exodus 21:28-32

Well, we do know what was prophesied would happen to those thirty pieces of silver:

I told them, "If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it." So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, "Throw it to the potter"-the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter. Zechariah 11:12-12

The Chief priests were delighted. Certainly, it was the last piece to cinch their plot. Judas would take them where they could arrest Jesus without interference. And they must have feared the possibility of interference because what ends this? They plotted to kill Lazarus also because the raising of Lazarus was causing many to put their faith in Jesus and not in the Chief Priests.

And so, the hospitality of two women and the death of one man were key ingredients in the plan of God for our salvation. And who is our salvation? Yeshua ben Yosef is.

This is the name Jesus carried as a man, Joshua son of Joseph. Joshua son of Nun was a great hero to the Jews and a good name to have. They wouldn't have given the name Jesus. Yeshua was his Aramaic name. In the Greek language it would have been Iesous and this was transliterated in Latin as Iesus. This in turn got transliterated in English as Jesus and we pronounce it the way we do because that is how those English letters are usually pronounced.

There is an interesting bit of history with the name Yeshua. It is the shortened version of the name Moses gave to his close aid, Hoshea, whom we know better as Joshua, who fought the Battle of Jericho.

These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Yehoshua [Joshua].) Numbers 13:16

Yeshua is the short form of Yehoshua, like Will from William, and we find Joshua called this shorter form in Nehemiah:

The whole company that had returned from exile built booths and lived in them. From the days of Yeshua [Joshua] son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great. Nehemiah 8:17

Yehoshua means "God or Jehovah is Salvation". It comes from two root words meaning; "The Existing One" and "saves". Yeshua means "Salvation" or "to Save" or "He saves". It comes from the second root word in Yehoshua. But we lose these subtlies because in our English Bible translation both words come out as Joshua in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New.

So Christ Jesus is the Anointed One Who Saves or The Anointed Salvation. Sometimes we lose meaning in translation.

Illustration: "The Betrayal of Judas" by Giotto di Bondone, 1304-06

Martha and Mary: Spectulations Part 14 - Stirring the Pot at a Party

So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead he withdrew to a region near the desert, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple area they asked one another, "What do you think? Isn't he coming to the Feast at all?" But the chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, he should report it so that they might arrest him.

Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. "But not during the Feast," they said, "or there may be a riot among the people or the people may riot."

Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor.

While he Jesus was in Bethany reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. A woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard, which she broke the jar and she poured the perfume on his head as he was reclining at the table. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

When the disciples saw this, some of those present, they were indignant, saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste? Why this waste of perfume?" they asked. "This perfume, it could have been sold at a high price, for more than a year's wages. And they rebuked her harshly. {And} one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor." (John 11:53-John 12:5, Mark 14: 1-5, Matthew 26:3-9)

I hear this cliche a lot: "No good deed goes unpunished". I don't particularly accept it, but in this case it seemed to happen. Jesus traveled to Bethany to raise His departed friend and ended up an outlaw with a price on His head.

So with the Passover coming a lot of people were looking for Him, wondering if he would come. I imagine there was quite the buzz by this time, especially with the recent raising of a dead man. Then Jesus finally came down and He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to a crowd waving palms, many ready to crown Him their king, and others thinking about what award they might get if they could somehow turn Him over to the Sanhedrin. On this visit a lot is going on and somewhere during all the hubbub, He is given a dinner party in His honor back in Bethany.

Something happens at this dinner party. It starts off normal enough. Jesus and the other guests are reclining at the table, as was the norm for the times. Lazarus is also reclining near Jesus. We must remember those plotting to kill Jesus were also plotting to kill Lazarus, too. We have here our last mention of Martha, only two words, Martha served. As I said, things seem to be as usual. But then Mary rushes in with a very expensive alabaster jar of Nard, a kind of perfume. She breaks the jar and pours some of the Nard on Jesus head and then dropping to the floor, she puts it on His feet and wipes them with her hair.

I have seen where some have said her act was the anointing of Jesus as our priest. Remember Jesus Christ is not his name. His name is Jesus, Christ is a title. It is the Greek (Christos = "creamy", "greased"; not to be confused with Crisco, which was an acronym for crystallized cottonseed oil) equivalent to the Hebrew Messiah and generally translated "the Anointed". They point out Jesus was not anointed and this act was the supplement. (But then so could it be said of the earlier and similar event where the sinful woman also poured perfume upon Him at a dinner.)

However, this could not be such a thing at all because it would have been a sacrilege and Mary would have been ostracized from her people. The Law required a special blend of perfume be created for anointing the Priests, not Nard, and it had to be applied by a priest. It could not be used by anyone else. 'This is to be my sacred anointing oil for the generations to come. Do not pour it on men's bodies and do not make any oil with the same formula. It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred. Whoever makes perfume like it and whoever puts it on anyone other than a priest must be cut off from his people.' Exodus 30: 31-33

We also must remember something else. Jesus was not a Levite, He was not of the priestly tribe. Jesus was a very special, very different priest, a priest like that mysterious character named Melchizedek, who was both a priest and a king, and who preceded the Law. Jesus was also not anointed under the Law nor by men. He was anointed by God. "You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him." Acts 10: 37-38.

There is, I suppose, a case to make that this was an anointing of Jesus as King. Nard was used by royalty and was used to anoint kings. But it had other purposes more germane to this circumstance.

One purpose Nard served was as a perfume sometimes included as part of a Hebrew maiden's dowry. Tradition would have it used in this manner: the bride would take her container of perfume, break it open and pour the contents on the bridegrooms head and feet. (The use of perfume in a dowry and for anointing the bridegroom was fairly common in the Middle East throughout history. It was practiced in Ancient Egypt and perhaps this is where the Hebrews adopted it from. Even today it may be found practiced in some Muslim cultures.) Mary having this expensive container of Nard may indicate she was unmarried and had this in her "hope chest" for when her betrothal occurred. She was willing to sacrifice part of her dowry then on Jesus, somewhat as a symbolic act of being wed to Him as the Church was to be the Bride of Christ.

Having this Nard again points to what we have suggested before, that the household of Martha and Mary had some above average means. The Nard may also have been a family heirloom passed down to Mary or it could have been a gift given her by her father as part of a future dowry or even security. Since inheritance of property generally went to the sons (Mary had at least one brother, Lazarus) daughters were often given valuable items in place of it, such as expensive perfume if the family could afford it.

And this was expensive perfume. "This perfume, It could have been sold at a high price, for more than a year's wages." A years wages for a common laborer in Jesus' time is estimated as equivalent to $15,ooo to $20,000 today. Expensive, indeed, and it would not have been a great quantity. There would only been enough Nard in the jar for one application.

Nard is a perfume derived from a root found in India and has a distinctive, pleasant smell. Once extracted, it was sealed in a small container to preserve the fragrance. This "jar" would be like a small flask, with a long neck. In order to open the jar, you would break this neck and pour it out. Thus, you would only get one use from it.

The container Mary had was itself expensive. It was alabaster, which was prized as a container of perfume. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, a First century Roman philosopher and writer) claimed "the best ointment is preserved in alabaster" [Pliny: Natural History XIII]. Alabaster is a fine-grained form of gypsum, generally white and smooth and translucent.

This was an extraordinary extravagant action taken by Mary and it is understandable some were taken aback by it. One in particular was especially indignant. Why should he care so much?

Before we address him, there was another common use of Nard, in burial. Why would dead bodies by anointed with perfume? At a time and in a place where neither embalming or mummification was preformed the answer should be obvious. Now you might think this was also unnecessary for the Jews who buried their dead within a day, but there was another tradition that may have had some relationship to this and some significance to both the deaths of Lazarus and Jesus. There was a practice of visiting the tomb of the deceased for three days to mourn and inspect the body to assure death. " One may go out to the cemetery for three days to inspect the dead for a sign of life, without fear that this smacks of heathen practice. For it happened that a man was inspected after three days, and he went on to live twenty-five years; still another went on to have five children and died later." Tractate Semahot (Mourning) 8:1

(Notice in light of this tradition of the three days of mourning and examining the body to verify death that Jesus waited until Lazarus had been dead four days before returning to Bethany.)

Jesus tells one and all it was for his burial that Mary made this sacrifice. We can understand those reclining at the table questioning this act, but why should we have any debate as to its purpose? Jesus didn't say she came to anoint Him a priest. He didn't say she came to anoint Him a king. He is quoted as saying, in three of the four gospels, that she did it to prepare Him for burial.

He has been explaining recently to his Apostles, to His Disciples, to the Pharisees and Sadducees and quite possibly to Mary as she sat at His feet listening that He was going to be put to death. Mary got it. Just as His raising of Lazarus pointed to His own death and resurrection and was part of God's moving toward that time, so was the anointing by Mary. What does he tell us: "It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. She did what she could. When she poured this perfume on my body, beforehand, she did it to prepare me for my burial."

Why was this a beautiful thing she did for Him? Remember, the bodies of the dead were anointed with fragrant oils...except those who were put to death as criminals. It was prophesied that Christ would die a criminal's death, and so he did. What she did it beforehand was by necessity and provided Him the honor that would be denied Him otherwise. Granted, the women who witnessed His crucifixion bought oils with the intent of anointing His body, but they never got to do so, did they? The body was buried with haste before the Passover Sabbath so they had no time to get the oils to do so. They purchased the ointments the next day, but then ended up waiting through the Saturday Sabbath before actually going to the tomb and then it was to late for he had risen.

But those at the dinner did not understand any of this. They were upset and angry that this woman "wasted" this precious perfume in this manner. One was especially incensed by it. "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?" he demanded to know. Perhaps a reasonable question, although this was not his property to sell or determine it's use. Now, it was the custom to give gifts to the poor on Passover Eve so that possibility could have been on Judas Iscariot's mind when he asked his question or...

...maybe not.

Illustration: "Banquet of Simon of Bethany", Stained Glass. Artist unknown, c. 1520.