09/29/2025
From My Fathers Cousin, Mr. Bob! So Right and So True! Thank You for The Clear Sighted View of Your Generation! Praying for This Nation!
Bob Van Devender
I am up late, unwashed and un fed. I have not made breakfast yet. I had something on my mind and heart, I felt led to write. I was raised in a Christian climate and environment, whose teachings I have fallen far from, in my own life. Last Sunday, I heard the most profound Christian testimony and sermon I will ever hear in 90 years of life.
I heard a widow, now given the task of raising two beautiful children alone, with the opportunity to witness to 100,000 people sitting around her, with a nearby stadium full of people, all sitting in the Arizona heat, with the opportunity to obey the command “Love your enemies, do good to those who wrongfully use you and persecute you,” with a broken heart that nobody could deny, saying “I forgive Him” to the young man who cowardly shot down her husband.
I don’t know what religion other people were raised in, but I have heard others say on world media, “No way. I would never say that. I hate my enemies.” Nobody in the world would be more excused from saying that, than a widow with an intentionally crippled family.
I thought about why she must have done that, the most fundamental reason for the lifestyle witnessed there by herself, four hours of speakers, and a minimum of 100,000 standing ovations and “amens.”
To that young widow, more important than all those 100,000 attendees and a world full of watchers, the most important one person in the world to her, was the young man, who, if the law is carried out, sometime in the future, his soul will required of him.
To her, his soul was the most important thing to her in that few minutes of witness. What could she do, or say or do, in behalf of that one person’s soul? She or no other person has to wonder. The command has stood for 2500 years: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hurt and persecute you.”
I do not have many friends on Facebook. I must be seen as one of the sorriest people around, compared to the thousands of friends listed for people I am related to, including my own children. Maybe my friends have died off as fast as they joined. That is sadly possible. None of that matters. A challenge to me, is what could I do or say to someone who continues to treat me in a very unfriendly way?
I could simply unfriend anyone who continues to aggravate me with comments they know will bring unpleasant feelings to a 90 year old man. There is plenty of scripture to justify doing that. We are also commanded, if we strive with someone long enough and it does not work, shake the dust of them and the place where they hang out. But doing that would not do a thing to change the heart of someone intentionally bringing unpleasantness to me.
Tulsi Gabbard moved me forever by reminding us that hate cannot conquer hate, only love can conquer hate. There was also another profound message in that four hour testimony at a death memorial that I am ever likely to hear the one like it for anyone, when the speaker reminded us that we do not need to be worried about other people, but first to be worried about our own lives and what is in our own heart and soul.
With a world hanging by a thread right now, facing another world war, that could be over in minutes instead of the four years of the last one, where just one bomb could start the end of human civilization in 72 minutes, there is only one hope and one solution. It was given us a long time ago, written by a man who I believe gave his own life in the end, for his writings:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beararth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never fails: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became old, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
-My paraphrase from classic Greek and Middle English.
