Without A Washer

 

Without A Washer

Dan Lane

 

I recently bought a new fire pit for the patio.  It came with those fearsome words, “Some assembly required.”  What was supposed to take one and half to two hours took four and one part was not done, a glass windbreak around the pit part where they put the burners and rocks.   That looked easy, just an hour so.  Nope!  Getting it put basically together was easy enough.  Adjusting the corners so they looked right was another two to three.  They had to be level and, because the screws were touching glass, they kept slipping around.  Then there was the propane tank.  I went and bought a four- foot-long hose.  Instead of the usual black knob, it was supposed to screw into the tank nozzle.  Nope!  Wrong thread.  So, I went back to Lowe’s and got a 20-inch-long hose with the regular knob.  Then it was a struggle screwing it onto the pit fitting inside the pit, with very little room to work inside of it.  It worked at last and fired up as it was supposed to do.

 

Along the way, I had to attach the latch for the propane door and the control panel.  The instructions and diagram showed using the supplied screw and washer, one for the door and four for the panel.  The pit has a basket weave covering all over of it.  Try as I might, I could not get the screw for the latch to engage.  The screw and washer were on top of the weave.  No matter how hard I pushed, no luck, it just wasn’t long enough.  I finally took off the washer, and the screw engaged the threads.  Now on to the control panel.  Same problem with those screws.  So, same solution, remove the washers.  Once that was done, all four screws caught and the panel was mounted. 

 

Finished, done, and it works as it is supposed to do, and it looks nice.

 

Sometimes when we want to talk with God or ask him to do something, the usual method doesn’t feel right, or things or people keep getting in the way.  It doesn’t matter how much you try; they just won’t give you the time and opportunity.  Maybe you have always done it a certain way, a certain prayer format or sequence.  It’s just that darn old washer on the short screw.  Take a look at what you are doing and how.

 

Are there things getting in your way that are preventing you or stopping you from talking to God, praying to God, or living the way he wants you to live?  Maybe a friend, a job, a hobby, even the wrong person.  Just as I had to leave out some washers in order to get those screws to grab hold, maybe you need to leave those people or things behind which you are allowing you to not be close to God.  It may not be comfortable or painless.  It may take a lot of effort and determination.  But!  The prize is worth every bit of it.

 

So, how about you?  Are there “washers” in your life?  Are you going to try to keep them and not get close to God?  Or are you going to throw them out and enjoy all that God has promised you?

 

 

 

A Wing Wants To Fly

 

A Wing Wants To Fly

Dan Lane

Back In January of this year, 2026, I started going to a Christian men’s group at Elevate Church in Frisco, Texas, every Saturday.  The man who leads the group is a Navy Seal (there are no “former” or “ex-“ Seals) named Garrett.  On average , there are about 300 to 400 men there each Saturday morning.  In his introduction each time, he tells us that God made each of us for a particular purpose.  He uses as a metaphor a hammer and a nail.  The hammer was made to hit the nail.  It has no other reason or use.  A hammer that doesn’t get to hit a nail is frustrated simply because it is not striking that nail.

I am a Navy pilot.  I don’t think in terms of hammers, although I have used one on many occasions.  I think in terms of wings.  A wing wants to fly, to feel the flow of air on its upper and lower surfaces.  It wants to feel the power of lift, of defeating its enemy, gravity.  If you think of that as the first order of sentience, then the wing wants the next order.  It wants to lift and carry a load from one place to another.  That load may be people or cargo or a mix of them.  It is doing the mission for which it was created, that makes it feel happy and fulfilled.

 

In the same train of thought, God made us, each of us, for a particular mission or purpose.  When I started this blog in December of 2014, this was one of the first ones I posted.  It had a simple question: Who made you and why did he make you?  This is the answer:

 

“God made me to love and serve him in this life, and be with him for eternity in the next”

 

God created you and me and every man and woman on this planet.  Millions have come before us and many will follow when we meet God in the next life.  We are, each of us, doing what he put in us to do his work.  Be a farmer, a lawyer, a priest or minister, police officer or any one of thousands of occupations or vocations.  It may take years to discover what we are in order to do God’s work, or it may have always been our life’s goal.

 

God uses us to come to him after our work is done.  Most of us do so as we stumble through the years he has given us.  Last September 10, 2025, an assassin killed Charlie Kirk.  Why?  He was carrying God’s message to millions.  Remember that good can come from evil.  Subsequent to his death, the world has seen a tremendous upsurge in people returning to church or going for the first time.  This is especially true about the youth.  They are coming in droves!  There are hundreds of new branches of his organization, Turning Point USA, being formed at schools and colleges and universities across the country.  I am sure Charlie is with God and they are looking at the results of his death.  I have to believe he would have sacrificed his life for the cause of bringing so many people to God.  While we all miss him, family, friends, co-workers, and those of us who watched him on TV or attended one of his rallies, God made Charlie to further the growth of his kingdom and Charlie answered the call, both in this life and the next.

 

What is your purpose?  What are you doing to bring people to God? Or to keep them there or bring them back?  You don’t have to be on an altar or behind a pulpit.  You just have to do what is your life’s work in such a way that people will see God’s message in you and by your example, want to have what you have, a life with God, here on this Earth and then sharing his eternity.

 

The directive is to seek.  So, is what you are doing seeking God, asking, finding, and leading people to him?  If so, great!  If not, when will you start?

 

It goes back to those words from an early writing, To Love and Serve Him In This Life and Be With Him For Eternity In The Next.

 

Go out there and do it!

The Kid Watch

 The Kid Watch

 The other day as I was driving, I saw a very familiar sight. It was a neighborhood ice cream truck. It was something I’ve seen hundreds of times and had eaten my share of its delightful treats. On the back of the truck was this sign for following motorists: WATCH OF KIDS. Excellent advice for sure since a child was likely to dart out of a house to buy a treat and not think about watching for a car. This same is true about the same child now totally absorbed in eating, or even devouring that delicious melting treat. Either way, that sign on the back of that ice cream truck told me it was my responsibility to make sure those kids came and went safely.

 Children play a large part throughout the bible. David was a young teenager when he slew the giant, Goliath. Then there are the three children thrown into the fiery furnace. Of course, Moses was a small baby when he was found and adopted into that royal Egyptian family. His education and training was God’s way of preparing him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. Abraham followed God’s orders and prepared t sacrifice his son. By following God’s orders, he began the journey to found a nation when God rewarded his faithfulness and provided a sheep to be slain and offered up in Isaac’s place. In the New Testament, Jesus told his followers to let the little children come to him, when they would have kept them away. There is also his admonition that unless we are as little children, we will not get to enter Heaven.

 How can you, and me, be as little children? How about not taking our faith, our beliefs, for granted. They are gifts freely given to us by God. It is fair to question what we don’t know or understand, but once we have our answer, then act on it as a child would.

 Do you look at your faith full of questions or even debate? There are many variations of Christianity and beliefs in God. Some even go far as to say if you don’t follow that particular version, you won’t go to heaven. It isn’t up to that version and its followers to determine that. That smacks of Pride, one of the deadly sins. God decides who gets to share his eternity.

 So it is up to you to be a child of God, regardless of the number of birthdays you have stacked up behind you.

 Will you be a child of God? It is his gift and wish. It is up to you to accept it.

The Lamp In The Darkness

 

Matthew 5:15 “Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel” (KJV)

‘It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness (The Christophers)

 Sometimes a piece of scripture sticks in my head for some reason.  It’s usually something that is common, since I am hardly a biblical scholar.  An example of that is the quote above from Matthew’s gospel.  More modern translations use “bowl” or “basket” instead of bushel.  For reference, a bushel is a basket about 18 inches diameter and 12 inches deep and holds about  56 pounds of grain, about eight gallons.  If you put it over a lamp, it will completely cover it and no light will be seen.

 In 1952, there was a TV program called “Christopher Closeup”.  The Christophers are a Catholic organization that put on a weekly program that discussed Christianity.  Their motto is “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”  While that sounds biblical, it is usually describer as coming from a Chinese proverb.  I was curious about this organization and looked it up.  It was founded in 1945 by Father James Keller who was concerned that many people saw the world’s problems, complained about them, and felt powerless to make a difference.  His philosophy was simple:

·       Don’t focus only on what is wrong.

·       Do something constructive, even if it seems small

·       One person can influence many others

·       The media can be used for good as well as for bad or harmful

I remember watching it many times growing up.  It went off of the air in 2012 after 60 years!

 The news media has reported a surge in the number of people going to or returning to the church and professing their Christianity.  Clearly, there are many lamps of faith being lit.  And, like the quote above from Matthew’s gospel, they are doing so in various visible ways.

 How about you?  What are you doing in your own life to be an example of your faith in such a way that others may be attracted to you or are curious enough to seek out a person such as a priest, minister, or lay leader, or maybe you?  Perhaps they attend a service at some church and that leads them to God and his son.

 In my retail job, I am seeing more and more people who are very visibly wearing a cross necklace.  Some of these crosses are plain and some are ornate.  These people are stating their faith to everyone who sees them.  Unfortunately, there are also some people who hide any evidence of their beliefs.  They say that their faith is private and won’t do anything to show it.

 The first group has taken the basket off of their lamps.  Light attracts and their lamp is their declaration of faith.  The second group keeps their lamp hidden or even unlit.  I am sure they meet people who are asking or wondering about God and Jesus Christ and they will be left  searching.  God will eventually lead them to someone who is part of the first group.

 Which group do you belong to?  Do you meet people with your lamp shining brightly or are you one whose lamp is dark and well hidden?  Going back to the Christopher’s motto, it may be that your candle will light the way of someone’s wish to know God. 

 Will you light it and keep it lit?  God is depending on you to help him bring more people to him.  How can you refuse?

The Advantage

 We all have an idea what advantage means. One definition says it is a beneficial factor or combination of factors, superiority of means. A person who is better trained, better equipped, has an advantage over another contestant or foe. There is an old saying, “Don’t take a knife to a gunfight.” The person with the gun has the advantage. But that is no guarantee. Someone who is fast and accurate with the knife has a good chance of winning in a face-to-face contest. 

We are seeing multiple examples of this with boys who claim to be girls. Rather than compete against other boys, they compete against girls. Given the basic physical differences to their advantage, the boys win most of the time. An obvious conclusion is they know they can’t be successful against other boys, so they claim to be girls as their “gender identity” and use this to win where in real life they could not be successful against boys. Unfortunately, there are some states that sanction this. 

Okay, I’ll get down off of my soapbox. 

When God created the angels, some remained loyal and others rebelled. This latter group was cast out of heaven into hell. We refer to them by different names: Devil, Satan, The Great Pretender. While God is superior in all ways, Satan has a certain power and is very sneaky. He has learned how to use this in order to tempt us and recruit us to follow him into his hell rather than go to heaven and spend eternity with God. 

Satan has his wiles, his tricks, his deceptions. Remember Satan’s temptations of Jesus. Jesus, of course, rejected all of them. But it shows just how far Satan is willing to go in his temptations. He will look for your weaknesses, your desires, and use them to tempt you into sin and, maybe, ultimately, into hell. 

Do you have a desire for more money? Then it is no big deal to take a little here, a little there. Say you are working in retail. Just short the till some. “The company can afford it” and “they did not give me that raise that I deserve.” Maybe you’ll get away with it, maybe you'll get fired. Satan doesn’t care. He just won. Or, perhaps you have a weakness of alcohol or drugs or both. There are some people whose DNA makes them more susceptible to these addictions. Satan makes it easy to obtain them. Others become addicts over time and use. He doesn’t care that it destroys families, marriages, jobs. Satan has won. 

And then there is sex. Some people are predators. Children, pornography, and crimes like rape. Thankfully, these are not so common as other forms. Maybe Satan wants you to build up a record. How many times can you score and with how many partners? Or, say you just flirt at work. Satan is going to push you to go further and further until it ends up in bed with someone not your spouse. He will put the thought in your mind that your spouse isn’t as exciting as in years past, You have needs that aren’t being answered, you’re bored, it isn’t great anymore, so you have the right to take care of them extramaritally. Wrong! Broken marriages, loss of trust, divorce, alienation from your children. Satan has won, and he doesn’t care about your problems. 

Satan had the advantage over you in that he knows how to tempt you. There are many other ways and weaknesses and he knows the best ways to tempt you. He has the advantage. 

BUT! You can have the advantage over Satan, you can counter his every strategy. You have a partner, a teammate, one who knows everything Satan knows, and he has the ways to beat Satan. He is God. If you can’t win or are being tempted to your limits, it is time to call on God to add his strengths to yours and guide you in the right direction, and coach you on how to resist Satan and his ways. Satan will never give up, never quit trying to win to recruit you into hell. However, God always bests him. You and God, unbeatable. With your faith and following his coaching, it has a different outcome. You and God win. Satan loses. Every time. 

So, make sure you call on your partner, God, any time. He is always there and is waiting for you to call. 

Final score: You and God – 1; Satan 0.

Configure/Reconfigure

Configure means to set up or arrange something so it works in a particular way.

 

The last plane I flew as a Navy pilot was the S-3A Viking.  Built by Lockheed, it was a twin jet, carrier-based submarine hunter.  It carried a crew of four and its primary mission was to search, detect, track, localize, and sink Soviet submarines in order to protect the carrier group.  When the Soviet Union collapsed on December 26, 1991, the submarine threat disappeared, so the Navy had to find a new use for it.

 

Reconfigure means to change or adjust something that is already set up.

 

Since the S-3A was basically out of a job, the Navy came up with several new missions.  It was used to inflight refuel other planes, some were modified to carry cargo.  Others were changed to do electronic warfare.  Others were changed so they could fire missiles at land targets, such as radar and missile sites during both Gulf wars.  A lot of thought, planning, and design changes went to accomplish this, a wide variety.

 

The second article I wrote for this blog in December 2014 was “To Love and to Serve”.  In it I quoted a lesson I memorized in the first grade:

 

Who made you?

God made me.

Why did God make you?

To love and serve him in this life and be with him for eternity in the next.

 

In other words, God configured us to do just that.  Regardless of how we do it, how we worship and serve him, we are doing it in the way he designed us.

 

When Lockheed modified the S-3A for its new missions, not only did they make changes to the plane itself, but they also made changes to the software in its computer.

 

God designed our “software” to live, play, work, love and pray, all to accomplish that which he designed in us.

 

We frequently hear about hacking, invading a different computer and making changes to its software.  It may be just to steal someone’s money, or disrupt the function and operations of a company, to freeze a computer and then collect a ransom to unlock it, or even disrupt something major, like a utility.   The most common name for this is virus.  So other companies have designed software to detect and block these viruses.

 

There is also a hacker that attacks God and all of us.  He employs a wide variety of methods and helpers to try to succeed.  His “handle” is Satan and he is working 24/7 to try to infect us with his virus.  Obviously, he succeeds sometimes and turns us away from God as he reconfigures us to his ways.  The name of this virus is SIN.  When this happens, and it does, God does everything he can to re-reconfigure us back to him.  This is named FORGIVENESS.  And it brings us back.  By the way, God has a powerful antivirus.  He named it GRACE.  When we use it, we don’t get infected with SIN.

 

So, it is up to us, you and me, to stay in God’s configuration, to listen to his words, and use GRACE to protect us.

 

So, are you protecting yourself?  And on those times when Satan infects you, are you using FORGIVENESS to change?  God has a limitless supply.  So be sure to use it as often as you need it.  All you have to do is ask.

Team

 

God tells me what to write in various ways.  I’ve had words just pop into my head, different things I see, like once a bumper sticker, songs as you’ve no doubt seen if you have read many of these.  This time my wife, a real estate broker/owner, was talking about her team and that word shouted in my head, TEAM!

 

We have heard the cliches about team.  There is no “I” in team, team is an acronym that stands for “Together Everyone Achieves More”.  Most of us have been on some kind of team, sports, academic, hobbies, organizations, and others.  Regardless of what kind of team, there are a few common characteristics: a member has a certain loyalty, emphasizing the whole instead of individual needs or desires, working together to achieve a common goal.  It is all about the team and teamwork.

 

All throughout the bible, we see teams that answered God’s calls and directions. When the Israelites were together and following God, they were successful and victorious.  When they turned their backs on God, disaster struck.  The obvious big example is the trip from Egypt to the Promised Land.  This is at best a walk of three or four weeks.  It took them 40 years.  Time and again they went a different way, sometimes following false gods.  It is hard to imagine a team with 600,000 men of fighting age, but that is what it was. 

 

We as Christians follow the teachings and directions of Jesus Christ and his father.  We are separated into various sects and religions, but the one common link is our following Jesus.  Some of us do so very diligently with daily prayer, reading the bible, and living in such a way that people who see us know which team we are on.  On the opposite end are those who claim to be Christians, but do nothing to follow him.  Most of us are somewhere in between.

 

Which kind are you?  Are you on one end, a loyal follower, or on the other end where people would be surprised to hear your claim to follow Jesus?

 

Take a self-assessment.  Are you doing what you need to do, want to do, to be on his team as a loyal player?  You don’t have to be biblical scholar, or ordained minister.  Or you could say you pray more often.  Does that mean being on your knees for an hour every day?  Or, you could pray for 60 seconds?  It doesn’t have to have a timer, and it doesn’t have to be formal.  It can just be a conversation.  God will listen and he will answer, sometimes as the faintest whisper.  God may send someone else to deliver his part of the conversation.  Do you read the bible?  I saw an article recently which had a program on how to read the bible in a year.  We can go to church regularly, not just to put a checkmark in the box, but to really worship him with others of your team.

 

Whatever you do is personal, it’s up to you.  Just make up your mind to live in such a way that you are the best ever team.

 

P.S. There is another team out there.  It is logical to think that if we are on a team, there is an opposing team.  It is a very strong team, with a very dedicated coach.  He goes by many names, but one we know well is Satan.  Coach Satan is constantly recruiting, no one is immune to his offers.  He believes that if he makes the right offer, the right incentive, he can recruit any one of us.  Our team is stronger, our coach is stronger, but it is up to us to constantly practice what God has taught us.  Satan believes he can win.  We know, and God knows, that the game, the war, never ends.  It is up to each of you to make sure that we always win.  You will be tempted, never doubt it.  If you follow God’s coaching, you, and we, will win.