Rearview

January 2, 2010January 1, 2010Allen Frederick Leave a comment

Insight for your “Journey across the Sky”

Random Ramblings from the Resident Raptor

Phillipians 3:13-15 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

: Image by Arthur Chapman via Flickr

The rearview mirror has a purpose when driving. It allows you to see what is approaching from behind, and aids you in lane changes and backing. There are times when the rearview mirror can be very useful, but if we were to drive by the rearview we would have to be backing up and not moving very fast.

Life is meant to be lived forward. It is meant to be faced head on and not backing up. There are many who cower in fear with each new day because they have been entangled in the snares of the past. The shackles of past failures continue to haunt there present circumstances. But like a fresh new canvas, each sunrise brings with it brand new opportunities to start all over again. There is no need to continually look backward. There is no value in retaining the past with its failures and successes because each new day brings with it even greater joys and opportunities.

Continually gazing into the rear view mirror will cause many wrecks along the highways of life. I fear there are way too many living their life with a rear view. They are stuck looking backward to perhaps a better time or a missed opportunity. With their attention constantly rearward they fail to notice the opportunities that lie ahead. They may even wind up missing the off ramp to success by their insistence on backward reflection.

The Apostle Paul admonishes the Phillipian believers to forget what lies behind. There is no value in clinging to the past even if it has been riddled with much success. Paul knew that resting on past accomplishments or regretting failures would only hinder future endeavors. Both success and failure can hinder future attainment if we allow ourselves to live in reverse. So by contrast Paul says to forget the past and focus on the future. He admonishes us to look for even greater things which lie ahead, which can be found by aiming high. Setting our sights on the not yet rather than look at the what was.

So as highway 2010 lies ahead, let us all see where this road may lead us. To those who are keeping their focus on things above, the journey will be exciting and joyful. Yes there will be potholes along the way. There will be roadblocks and detours, but in the end, if we do not quit, we will arrive right where God intends us to be.

But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness. _{Isaiah 40:31 (BBE)}

Along for the journey

Happy New Year

January 1, 2010January 1, 2010Allen Frederick Leave a comment

Insight for your “Journey across the Sky”

A View from the Nest www.eagleviews.org

Random Ramblings from the Resident Raptor

Phillipians 3:13-14 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” —Edith Lovejoy Pierce

“Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.” —Henry Ward Beecher

The ‘Journey Across the Sky’ continues.” We have not yet reached our destination, nor have we yet achieved our objective. We have only yet to become what we can be, and we have yet to accomplish all that we can accomplish through Christ. I, like Paul, can state most assuredly that I have yet to apprehend but I shall forget the past with it’s successes and loses and strive toward even greater goals, aim even higher, and soar to even greater heights than thusly achieved. As we set our sights on things above rather than on things of this earth, then surely we can hope for the best that God has to offer all those who put Him first. Here’s to 2010 and the challenges it brings, and the rewards it contains, and the joys it offers. May your 2010 be blessed indeed!

Onward and upward in Christ! Soar on!

But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness. _{Isaiah 40:31 (BBE)}

Along for the journey

Pass the Salt

December 14, 2009December 14, 2009Allen Frederick 3 Comments

A View from the Nest

Random Ramblings from the Resident Raptor

Insight from the Journey across the Sky

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men” (Matt. 5:13).

: Image by ghbrett via Flickr

Well winter has finally arrived in Western Pennsylvania. This morning as I traveled to church, or slid along the frozen roadway, I came to a short hill along which several cars where ditched along the sides. I knew from experience, continuing along this route would not be wise. I slowed to a stop and decided on my next move. I watched as a few cars passed the ditched vehicles with caution and determined that I could move forward rather slowly and find a nice place along the berm of the road to park until the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDot) could salt the roadway.

I no sooner pulled off the road when my cell phone began to ring with messages from the church family asking how I was and how the roads where. I told them I was stopped along the road awaiting the arrival of the salt truck. Before long the phone rang again and the message this time was church was canceled and there was no need to continue on to church.

Okay at least I did not have to worry about getting to the church on time. But here I sat along the roadway awaiting the arrival of a salt truck.

Although the mixture of salty brine and de-icer wrecks havoc on a car’s finish, driving in winter in the northeast would be almost impossible without this wintertime road treatment. In fact the only time anyone wishes to be behind a slow moving salt truck, is when the roadways are hazardous and the driver knows that the salt solution being applied to the roadway is going to make their journey onward much safer. So they dutifully follow slowly behind the salt spreader, thankful for it’s arrival.

It was less than twenty minutes when the salt truck had arrived. I quickly fell in behind the truck and headed back toward home. The assurance of knowing the roadway beneath my wheels had been treated made the return trip less stressful. The closer I got to home the better the road surface became. Finally, back home, I was thankful that I was not involved in an accident and that no one was hurt along the stretch of highway I had traveled.

Anyone who lives in the frozen Northeast knows all too well the importance of proper road maintenance. We are very mindful of the road conditions once wintertime sets in. Our tax dollars are well spent in stockpiling the road crew’s depots with plenty of road salt. That is one expense I gladly pay for.

Salt’s Attributes

Salt has many useful purposes. For example did you know salt is essential for muscle movement, including that of the heart. It’s necessary for the digestive tract to function properly –crucial for the transmission of messages by the nerve cells, and regulated osmotic pressure and the movement of fluid to and from the cell. Salt is found in blood, sweat, and tears. Hotter climates increase the need for salt consumption. Chronic deprivation of salt causes loss of weight, loss of appetite, nausea, muscular cramps and even stunts growth.

In the food industry, it is used in flavoring and seasoning, pickling, canning, preserving, baking, dairying, curing meat and fish, and processing flour and other foods. Salt is a binder, a texturizer, and a fermentation control agent. Other useful applications include oil well drilling, and fertilizing!

And of course when applied to the roadways salt:

· Melts ice and snow

· Gives traction

· Leaves behind a residue

· Provides safe passage on the highways where applied

· Long lasting

· Proven to work at even very low temperatures

· Goes to work as soon as it is applied

So as you see salt has many useful purposes. However if salt looses those useful properties, then it becomes good for nothing.

Faith in Christ has much the same attributes as road salt, when you think about it a little. I mean faith, when applied to a life sliding along the slippery slope of life’s byways, provides sure-footedness, safe passage, has long lasting effects (it is eternal), is proven to work under the worst circumstances, starts to work as soon as it is applied, melts the sin hardened heart and thaws the coldest sin sick soul, and leaves behind evidence of it being applied to a life.

: Image via Wikipedia

There are four “modern horsemen of the apocalypse,” according to Dr. Richard Land in remarks delivered to the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis, and they are “riding forth to wreak havoc and destruction in our society.” Land listed the four as the denial of the sanctity of human life, the rise of hardcore Internet pornography, the radical homosexual agenda’s attempt to undermine marriage, and radical Islamic jihadist.

The inactive, rudderless Church

If the church of Jesus Christ, whose congregations number in the hundreds of millions in America, was doing what it was supposed to be doing (“… created in Christ Jesus to do good works”), a whole host of problems would be taken care of in short order. Indeed, instead of focusing on the four horsemen of the apocalypse, we may do well to concentrate heaviest on the salt supply. An inactive and ineffective church, ignoring the call to be holy, is as bad as a culture can hope for. Faith used only within the confines of worship but remains unreleased into the world, is really not faith at all.

Let’s face it, what good is a supply-yard full of salt, if there are no trucks to spread it on dangerous roadways? What good does a truck load of salt do a stranded motorist if the salt never gets applied to the roadway they are traveling? What good does the gospel do confined within the supply yard of the local church if it never gets carried outside to be applied to slippery byways of life? What good is a full salt shaker if it only sits on the tabletop and is never used?

Although there may be a plentiful supply of salt in the world, there seems to be a shortage of salt spreaders.

When the church isn’t the salt of the earth or the light of the world, disaster awaits.

But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness. _{Isaiah 40:31 (BBE)}

Along for the journey

Acts of Treason

December 11, 2009December 11, 2009Allen Frederick Leave a comment

“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable for he is known and carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself … for the traitor appears to be no traitor: He speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their faces and their garments; he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the souls of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is to be less feared.” — Cicero

Do You Have a Back-up?

October 21, 2009October 21, 2009Allen Frederick Leave a comment

A View from the Nest
Random Ramblings from the Resident Raptor
Insight from the Journey across the Sky

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5,6

My work requires me to travel throughout Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. It is important that I get to my destinations on time every time. Therefore I invested in a GPS navigation system that I can take with me each day to make sure that I arrive on time. It has been over two years since I purchased this unit and it has pointed me in the right direction every time I called upon it. That was until this past Saturday.

Now to be fair I can not blame the unit for failing because it was working fine until the battery went dead. Even though I had the unit plugged into the cigarette lighter of the truck I was driving, I failed to notice that there was no power coming from that cigarette lighter outlet to keep the battery of the GPS unit charged. I am thankful that the battery lasted long enough to get me to my first destination at which time the CHARGE light came on and the unit shut down.

What was I going to do? How was I going to navigate from the first stop to the next stop? I had a general idea how to get to where I needed to go but I was not sure of the direction I was traveling and how to get from the first stop to the proper highway to head to the second. I had never been to the second location before so I was not sure I was going to be able to find the location without help from a map or the GPS unit which I have totally relied upon for two years.

It is amazing how dependent we become upon technology. The convenience these gadgets bring to our lives are both a blessing and a curse. I have never been known to be one who can not find my way around and it is difficult to get me lost but I have been lost on more than one occasion. It is not a problem if I am not pressed for time or being relied upon to be somewhere at a particular time and others are waiting on me. If I have all day to get somewhere then it is not as imperative that I stay on course.

Well I had to come up with a solution to my DEAD battery dilemma. It just so happened that I had another piece of technology with me on that trip, my cell phone. Being a SPRINT subscriber I had access to SPRINT NAVIGATION and I was happy to find out it worked. In fact it worked great. I was not sure it was going to work because I had all data and extra services deactivated on the phone because I only wanted it for making and receiving calls. My first thought was to call customer service and have the SPRINT navigation service activated so that I could use it to get to my second location. I called the customer service center only to find out it did not open until an hour past the time I needed to arrive at my next destination.

I simply prayed and tried the Sprint Navigation application that I had downloaded onto the phone 2 years prior and was pleasantly surprised to find it still worked. I programmed the unit for the address I needed to get to and it took me right to the location with little or no problems.

I was relieved to have had this back-up option. I really did not know what I would have done had I not had this option. This got me to thinking about other electronic devices that I own. Most I can live without’ but some I use regularly and would find life a little less convenient if they quit working. One of those devices is my computer. The computer has become such a huge part of my life and my work that it would be difficult to function without it. I use it to keep a journal, I use it for daily devotional work and study, I use it to compose letters and articles as well as maintaining this blog and others. I use it heavily for church work. And because I have used it so much I am always mindful of the need to back up often. It is only a matter of time before the computer will crash and data will be lost. If you do not maintain a backup of your work you are going to loose it.

When it comes to electronics it is wise to have a backup because all these gadgets will fail at one time or another as my GPS adventure demonstrated. Because I have been through computer crashes and dead cell phones I have learned how to deal with the eventuality of a malfunction. I have several copies of my most important files backed up and stored in several places. So far I have been able to recover from all major computer crashes without much difficulty. Although everyone who has ever had to undergo a restore knows it is not painless.

Having a backup plan for my GPS problem and having backup files for computer malfunctions is wise especially if those electronic devices are important in your day to day activities.

But what about your day to day life? Do you have an alternate plan for the times when things just do not go as you hoped or planned? I mean what do you do when you are faced with a loss? What do you do when you find yourself in a situation that you do not know how to handle? What do you do when you find yourself in a place that is uncomfortable and unfamiliar? What do you do when you find yourself at a loss for an answer to a problem, or faced with a life threatening circumstance? Do you have an emergency back up plan? What would you do? Who would you call? Where would you go for assistance?

In the world of electronics having a backup is not difficult. It certainly does require some forethought and will probably cost you some out of pocket expense but in the long run the little it costs is priceless to the piece of mind a back up plan provides.

When it comes to the matters of life however I fear that many people fail to plan for the eventuality of an unexpected disaster. They do not have a backup plan. They have no alternative to whatever life throws at them. Many live lives of quiet desperation, toughening it out without much hope of a solid solution. Apart from faith in God the world can be a heartless, cruel place. There are not many DO OVERS permitted in real life. IN fact most of us only get one chance to get it right.

There is hope however, there is a backup plan. There is a restore button you can press to get back up and running when life throws you a curve ball. There is a place you can go to get direction and navigational tips to get you back on course. That place is found in the LORD JESUS CHRIST. His word can provide comfort, hope, solace, joy, direction, instruction for daily living and even a do over when you find yourself gone astray. God’s love and forgiveness can restore a life that has crashed. His Holy Spirit can restore the broken hearted. God’s goodness can make up for life’s cruelties. He is life’s reset button.

However it is wise to not abuse God’s mercy by continuing to live recklessly. But if life throws you a curve ball and things seems to be spinning out of control, remember that He is as close as the whisper of His name.

Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord (Jesus) shall be saved, restored, and set on the right path once again. Thank God for back-ups! Thank God for a navigational tool that never fails however it does require to be recharged from time to time. By praying and reading God’s word you keep God’s internal guidance system running at full power. Failing to plug into the power source daily weakens the navigational power of God’s Holy spirit.

But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness. Isaiah 40:31 (BBE)

Along for the journey