Danger

D is for Danger.  There are many dangerous machines, but wood chippers ore some of the most dangerous.

Although it is definitely not the kind of thing that I normally do at my business, some time ago I painted a Bandit Wood Chipper. Wood chippers have powerful feed systems with large chipper openings that allow you to break down limbs and branches. One of the things that had to be done was the removal of all of the decals and stickers before painting. So that we would know where to put the new decals when we finished painting, I took pictures of all the decals and locations for reference.

Wood chippers are very dangerous machines. I have never used one, but after reading all of the warning decals I have new found respect for the dangers involved.



This one reads DANGER! STOP TO THINK!! Reaching or kicking into the infeed spout can cause serious injury or death! DO NOT reach with your hand or kick with your foot inside the feed spout. The feedrolls are very powerful. Once your hand or foot is grabbed by the feedrolls, you can be pulled into the chipper. Do not think you will be able to pull yourself out of the feedrolls. They will not let go!



This one reads DANGER! SEVERE INJURY OR DEATH CAN OCCUR! UNLESS THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE FOLLOWED.

Do you think Bandit Industries Inc. is serious about their warning? Are they plain enough for you to understand? The wood chipper I was working on was literally covered with these warnings. I took 30 pictures of warning labels. The manufacturer wants to make sure that you understand the dangers of working with this machine.







This one is very serious. BRUSH CHIPPERS ARE VERY DANGEROUS MACHINES TO OPERATE! READ AND BELIEVE THIS WARNING DECAL!

One line on this warning decal reads "There have been MANY ACCIDENTS involving the feed rolls, resulting in the amputation of hands, arms, feet, legs and DEATH. DO NOT let this happen to you!

All of these warnings made me think of the Bible, and all of the directions and warnings that God has placed in it.

In Jeremiah 6:10 the Bible says, "Who will listen to me? The people of Israel have closed ears, so they cannot hear my warnings. They don't like the word of the LORD; they don't want to listen to it!"

Why is it that we don't want to listen to the word of the Lord? When I read the warnings on a piece of machinery I take them seriously, but if I read it in the Bible I don't want to listen.

In Romans 6:23 there is a clear warning. As clear as the warning decals on a wood chipper. It says "The wages of sin is death". That is clear. Thankfully the verse doesn't end there. It also says "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord".

The warnings on the wood chipper were not placed there because Bandit Industries Inc. doesn't want you to have any fun. They were not placed there just to restrict the user. They were placed there for the benefit of the user.



God's commandments are like the warnings on the wood chipper. They are not to restrict us, they are for our benefit.

Many times we look at God's law as a jail. We feel that it creates uncomfortable restrictions. We need to ask God to give us a love for his commandments, to instill in us a desire for the peace and safety of His law.

1 John 5:3 tells us "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome".




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The Beatles - All You Need Is Love

Fifty years ago today, February 9, 1964, The Beatles appeared live on American television for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show.  73 million people tuned in that evening making it one of the most memorable moments in television history. Fifty years later, people still remember exactly where they were the night The Beatles stepped onto Ed Sullivan’s stage.

Over the next few years Beatlemania swept the world as John, Paul, George and Ringo became as famous an anyone on the planet.

In the summer of 1967 the first live, international, satellite television production was broadcast. The program was titled Our World, and nineteen different nations were invited to perform or appear in separate segments featuring their respective countries. The two-and-half-hour event had the largest television audience ever up to that date: an estimated 400 million people around the globe watched the broadcast.  

The BBC had commissioned The Beatles to write a song for the United Kingdom's contribution.  The Beatles were asked to come up with a song containing a simple message to be understood by all nationalities.

The song they wrote for the program was titled “All You Need Is Love”.  The song was an immediate hit and became a catch phrase. The summer of 1967 became known as the Summer of Love, and the song All You Need Is Love was the anthem.

Is there any truth to the catch phrase “all you need is love”?  I believe that it is the truth.  All You Need Is Love – Love is all you need.

In 1 John 4:7-10 the Bible tells us,  "Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God—for God is love.  God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins".

Love should be the basis for everything we do.  In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus answered,  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

All of the Law and the Prophets – The entire Bible are summed up in these words.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  When you distill it down that much it seems so simple. It really is true – All You Need Is Love.

In the love letter God wrote to you called the Bible  it says, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything above, nor anything below, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Romans 8:38,39

How would you feel if you if you wrote these beautiful words to the love of your life and they were ignored. God says to us, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  We will never know all the ways he shows his love to us. We so often completely miss the wonderful revelations of his love for us as we go about our daily lives.

God's Word is His love letter to us. The love of Jesus waits in each page! Don’t leave your love letters unopened and unread. God loves you and he wants to tell you just how much. Open his love letter to you and listen to what he has to say to you.

The greatest love poem found in the Bible is in John 3:16,17. “ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved”. 

What beautiful words. We need to keep in mind that it is the world that God loves, not a single nation, not a single race. Not just the “good” people, not just the people who love God back. “God so loved the world.” This includes the lovable and the unlovable; those who are popular, and those who have no one else to love them; the ones who love God, and the ones who never think of God.

Reading God’s love letter to you is the only way you can learn to love others.  In the Bible we have the example of Jesus.  As Christians we are to follow in his footsteps.  There is a popular Christian song titled, "The Proof of Your Love".  The lyrics to the chorus are:  "Let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love.   Let my love look like You and what You're made of.  How You lived, how You died, Love is sacrifice.  So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love".

Is your life the proof of the love of Jesus?  No matter what we do in our life if we don’t have love it is meaningless.

If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would I be?

If I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will all disappear. Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.

It’s like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.  All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

There are three things that will endure—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.  All You Need Is Love!

You can read more of my writings on spiritual topics here.

Lists

When I was growing up I loved to make lists.  I kept a list of the books that I had read from the Longmont Public Library.  I kept a list of baseball players and their statistics.  Each week I would make my own Top 40 list.

Do you make lists?  What kind of lists do you make?  Today your lists may be on your computer or your phone, but I bet you make lists. Lists keep us organized.

I recently read a story written by Christian author Max Lucado.  On a plane he was seated next to an attractive young woman.  The young woman was very nervous about flying, so he took out his Bible and read some reassuring passages.  As they talked she told him that she was a believer once when she was young.  Max asked her, “Do you believe in heaven?  "Yeah."  "Do you think you’ll go there?"


She looked away for a minute and then turned and answered confidently, "Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be in heaven." How do you know?"

"How do I know I’m going to heaven?" She grew quiet as she formulated her response. "Well, I’m basically good. I smoke less than a pack a day. I exercise. I’m dependable at work and," she counted each achievement on a finger, "I made my boyfriend get tested for AIDS."

That was her list. By her way of thinking, heaven could be earned by smoking less and safe sex. Her line of logic was simple: I keep the list on earth and I get the place in heaven.

Most of us are a lot like the woman on the plane.  We feel that we are basically good.  We are decent hard working people.  We have a list that we feel qualifies us for heaven.  Your list may not include cigarettes or AIDS, but I know you have a list.  There is a purpose for the list: to prove we are good.

In Romans 3:20-22 Paul tells us, “No one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what his law commands. For the more we know God’s law, the clearer it becomes that we aren’t obeying it.  But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight—not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago.  We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.

Well, so much for lists. So much for being "basically good."  If no one is good, if no list is sufficient, if no achievements are adequate, how can a person be saved?  Wouldn’t you like to ask Jesus, “How can I be saved”?  Jesus was asked that very question.

We find the story in Mark 10:17.  “Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

Isn’t that the question you would like to ask Jesus?   It is very interesting that Jesus gave the man a list.  In verse 19 Jesus answers, “You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”


It seems that Jesus is saying that to have a list is OK.  It seems like we should have a list.  When the man told Jesus that he had done all of these things, Jesus said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”  The story has a sad ending.  The man was OK with keeping his list, but he was not willing to follow Jesus.

No matter how long or complete your list, there is always one more thing you need to do.

I recently read a story of a woman who for years was married to a harsh husband. Each day he would leave her a list of chores to complete before he returned at the end of the day. Clean the yard. Stack the firewood. Wash the windows.  Sweep the floor.  Bake the bread.


If she didn’t complete the tasks, she would be greeted with his explosive anger. But even if she did complete the list, he was never satisfied; he would always find inadequacies in her work.

After several years, the husband passed away. Sometime later she remarried, this time to a man who lavished her with tenderness and adoration.

One day, while going through a box of old papers, the wife discovered one of her first husband’s lists. And as she read the list, a realization caused a tear of joy to splash on the paper.  "I’m still doing all these things, and my husband doesn’t have to tell me. I do it because I love him."

You can’t make a list long enough and complete enough to satisfy the requirements for eternal life, but Jesus hasn’t asked you to.  All he wants is you; All of you.  He wants you to be madly in love with him. Head over heels, do anything for him, in love with him.





In John 14:15 he tells us, “If you love Me, keep My commandments”. Not because that will guarantee us salvation, but because we are so much in love that we want to please Jesus. If we truly love Jesus, doing the things that will please him will not be a burden. They will be a joy.

The ABC Wednesday Meme is a fun way to see some great blogs.

All You Need Is Love

In the summer of 1967 the first live, international, satellite television production was broadcast. The program was titled Our World, and nineteen different nations were invited to perform or appear in separate segments featuring their respective countries. The two-and-half-hour event had the largest television audience ever up to that date: an estimated 400 million people around the globe watched the broadcast.  

The BBC had commissioned The Beatles to write a song for the United Kingdom's contribution.  The Beatles were asked to come up with a song containing a simple message to be understood by all nationalities.

The song they wrote for the program was titled “All You Need Is Love”.  The song was an immediate hit and became a catch phrase. The summer of 1967 became known as the Summer of Love, and the song All You Need Is Love was the anthem.

Is there any truth to the catch phrase “all you need is love”?  I believe that it is the truth.  All You Need Is Love – Love is all you need.

In 1 John 4:7-10 the Bible tells us,  "Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God—for God is love.  God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins".

Love should be the basis for everything we do.  In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus answered,  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

All of the Law and the Prophets – The entire Bible are summed up in these words.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  When you distill it down that much it seems so simple. It really is true – All You Need Is Love.

In the love letter God wrote to you called the Bible  it says, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything above, nor anything below, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Romans 8:38,39

How would you feel if you if you wrote these beautiful words to the love of your life and they were ignored. God says to us, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  We will never know all the ways he shows his love to us. We so often completely miss the wonderful revelations of his love for us as we go about our daily lives.

God's Word is His love letter to us. The love of Jesus waits in each page! Don’t leave your love letters unopened and unread. God loves you and he wants to tell you just how much. Open his love letter to you and listen to what he has to say to you.

The greatest love poem found in the Bible is in John 3:16,17. “ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved”. 

What beautiful words. We need to keep in mind that it is the world that God loves, not a single nation, not a single race. Not just the “good” people, not just the people who love God back. “God so loved the world.” This includes the lovable and the unlovable; those who are popular, and those who have no one else to love them; the ones who love God, and the ones who never think of God.

Reading God’s love letter to you is the only way you can learn to love others.  In the Bible we have the example of Jesus.  As Christians we are to follow in his footsteps.  There is a popular Christian song titled, "The Proof of Your Love".  The lyrics to the chorus are:  "Let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love.   Let my love look like You and what You're made of.  How You lived, how You died, Love is sacrifice.  So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love".

Is your life the proof of the love of Jesus?  No matter what we do in our life if we don’t have love it is meaningless.

If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would I be?

If I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will all disappear. Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.

It’s like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.  All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

There are three things that will endure—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.  All You Need Is Love!

Danger!

Although it is definitely not the kind of thing that I normally do at my business, a while back I painted a Bandit Wood Chipper. Wood chippers have powerful feed systems with large chipper openings that allow you to break down limbs and branches. One of the things that had to be done was the removal of all of the decals and stickers before painting. So that we would know where to put the new decals when we finished painting, I took pictures of all the decals and locations for reference.

Wood chippers are very dangerous machines. I have never used one, but after reading all of the warning decals I have new found respect for the dangers involved.



This one reads DANGER! STOP TO THINK!! Reaching or kicking into the infeed spout can cause serious injury or death! DO NOT reach with your hand or kick with your foot inside the feed spout. The feedrolls are very powerful. Once your hand or foot is grabbed by the feedrolls, you can be pulled into the chipper. Do not think you will be able to pull yourself out of the feedrolls. They will not let go!



This one reads DANGER! SEVERE INJURY OR DEATH CAN OCCUR! UNLESS THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE FOLLOWED.

Do you think Bandit Industries Inc. is serious about their warning? Are they plain enough for you to understand? The wood chipper I was working on was literally covered with these warnings. I took 30 pictures of warning labels. The manufacturer wants to make sure that you understand the dangers of working with this machine.







This one is very serious. BRUSH CHIPPERS ARE VERY DANGEROUS MACHINES TO OPERATE! READ AND BELIEVE THIS WARNING DECAL!

One line on this warning decal reads "There have been MANY ACCIDENTS involving the feed rolls, resulting in the amputation of hands, arms, feet, legs and DEATH. DO NOT let this happen to you!

All of these warnings made me think of the Bible, and all of the directions and warnings that God has placed in it.

In Jeremiah 6:10 the Bible says, "Who will listen to me? The people of Israel have closed ears, so they cannot hear my warnings. They don't like the word of the LORD; they don't want to listen to it!"

Why is it that we don't want to listen to the word of the Lord? When I read the warnings on a piece of machinery I take them seriously, but if I read it in the Bible I don't want to listen.

In Romans 6:23 there is a clear warning. As clear as the warning decals on a wood chipper. It says "The wages of sin is death". That is clear. Thankfully the verse doesn't end there. It also says "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord".

The warnings on the wood chipper were not placed there because Bandit Industries Inc. doesn't want you to have any fun. They were not placed there just to restrict the user. They were placed there for the benefit of the user.



God's commandments are like the warnings on the wood chipper. They are not to restrict us, they are for our benefit.

Many times we look at God's law as a jail. We feel that it creates uncomfortable restrictions. We need to ask God to give us a love for his commandments, to instill in us a desire for the peace and safety of His law.

1 John 5:3 tells us "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome".