Dream Boat Afloat

"Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet..."








So went the all-American jingle of radio commercials for Chevrolets perhaps 15 years ago. Even then, nobody cared to say how many of the parts in a Chevy were actually made here.

But the baseball metaphor hit home during the dog days of summer.

Metaphors are a tool for us to understand and describe things by their similarity to other things we know.

A popular one trotted out a few years ago by the politics-of-scarcity machine was this one:

"A rising tide lifts all boats."

It's another way of saying that if the economy gives rich people (big boats) a lift (more money, more stuff), it will surely do the same for poor people (little boats). Hey, they all "float", right?

Yeah, but what if you don't have a boat? What if you are about exhausted and treading water?

What if you are standing on the muddy bottom right now on tippytoes and just barely able to point your nostrils above the waves and ripples?

A rising tide may indeed lift the boats. But if you have NO boat, buddy, you just might drown. Oh, well...

He let the H2O get above his ears, ya know? Or....?

Our human nature is corrupt, sinful. Unless modified by God's grace, our default position is too often that of blaming the poor.

It reminds me of the cartoon I saw many years ago in a humor magazine published in the Soviet Union. Even the Commies sometimes hoped to distract people's attention from their grim existence by poking a little fun. And criticism. And blame.

The cartoon went like this. A man with a beer gut and a red nose (clearly a vodka addict) is standing in his baggy trunks on a lake shore. Just offshore there is a sign that reads:

"Depth 20 meters. Persons unable to swim should not permit the water to come past their necks."

People with no boats should not permit the rising tide to come past their necks. OK. That's the "hope" of people who have had their measly little leaky tubs taken out from under them so that the materials can be used to build bigger yachts for the boat owners?

Good luck with that, non-swimmers.

The Bible is all over the policy of having boats so big that we can't see over the side to notice the people drowning for lack of flotation. Unequivocally so. It ain't God-like. Not according to Amos, not according to Isaiah, not according to Leviticus, not according to Paul, or Jesus or James.

The Bible takes the upside down view of things. Everyone first needs a boat. Then, the same tide that lifts the small ones will in turn lift the larger ones. It has to. By definition. The God of Creation who invented physics, gravity, specific gravity and flotation by displacement made it so. In the beginning.

Our task is to get everybody into a boat: ours, their own, or someone else's. Whatever it takes. Then, the tides won't matter so much. God doesn't think much of drowning, wants the water to come no higher than anyone's armpits. Ever.

Ain't much praise in a drowning victim. Ain't much glory there either.

But a new boat owner might just sing for joy. And folks might even hear the pleasant music of that aboard the adjacent yacht with the champgne, caviar and white table cloths up there on the sundeck. Might be the sweetest music they (we) ever heard.

Dream boat afloat.

Whatever it takes....

The baseball metaphor has us looking for the home run most days. Only the home run. Seems like unless we're absolutely sure we can hit that grand slam homer, we're afraid to swing at anything. Maybe we need a thousand singles instead. Millions of 'em. Maybe...

Just get on base. Drive in one run at a time. Nobody left in the dugout. Nobody struck out. Nobody called out. Safe at home. With a boat.

Time to think outside the batter's box, outside the boat, outside the metaphor.

So that the boatless among us get in on the flotation.

Dreamboat. Afloat.

"Someone's singing, Lord, kum ba yah..."

Shalom,
Roger

Here Come da Judge!

Luke 18:1-8

Jesus told them a parable to show them that shey should always pray and not lose heart (give up). He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who niether feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in the town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'"

The Prinveville Bible Fellowship meets in a building that had a former life. We hope. We notice that the "Payment Slot" has been disabled with screws. That didn't disable someone's imagination in altering the text, however.

Some churches have worked that way. Many so-called justice systems around the world have never worked differently. Justice is given to the highest bidder, the one with the most power.

When Jesus sets the stage of the parable by introducing the corrupt, unjust judge, the one who decided not on the basis of his faith, public pressure or the human community's constitution and laws--but apparently on the basis of how he felt or how well he was paid by the powerful--I imagine someone in the crowd piped up and said,

"Yo, Rabbi, name me a judge that doesn't work this way!"

Point taken.

And imagine the widow going up against this kind of bullheadedness and corruption. What's she got going for her? Nothing. Total zip.

In Jesus' day, and still in our day in many places, you are the bottom rung of the ladder if you are female and without a family, without male power brokers. 'Specially if you got no bucks.

But the widow does not give up. She won't take no for an answer. She wears out the crooked, corrupt judge. Nags 'til the cows come home. Good on her!

So Jesus says, "If the most powerless person you can imagine can prevail against the most corrupt system you can imagine, what's keeping you from taking advantage of your much more favorable conditions?"

For the widow, the system is completely stacked against her. But it eventually crumbles her way.

For us, the God system is completely stacked in our favor. Do we have faith enough to ask? And keep at it? At all?

Do we have faith enough to ask?

If we don't, here's a piece of advice: Act as if we do.

Pray anyway. Pray until it hurts. Pray until it feels better. Don't give up. Don't quit. Don't lose heart.

Pray for what you really need. Which is the same thing God really needs. God can't be unfaithful to God's self. So, doggone it, ask for it!

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven...


Amen.

Pastor Roger

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury...

Last week was the week of no sleep.

It started over a year ago, June 15 to be exact. That's whenNorm, a friend of mine, received a letter alleging defective workmanship in the repair of an aircraft engine that later developed recurring problems that led to further very expensive repairs. No accident, no crash. No damage to the twin Cessna. No one hurt. Just a trashed engine.

The owner hired an "expert" to investigate and do a failure analysis. The expert did a shoddy job of investigating and documenting, then wrote a report based on jumped-to conclusions. It was a terrible report with confused words, sentences that did not logically follow, conclusions not based on a systematic cause-effect relationship. Worse, the so-called expert alleged that the engine damage resulted from an out-of-balance crankshaft but misunderstood the readings and units of measure from the balancing machine that derived the numbers.

My friend asked if I could help. I had expertise in all the required areas. I wrote a preliminary report. The case turned into litigation, a civil suit for damages, $91,000 to be exact.

I wrote a second, much longer and more detailed report. I documented everything, set it out as I would in an engineering report, did computations. The other side didn't give my report the time of day. They didn't even bother to depose me before trial.

"He's never given testimony in court before," they must have thought, "we'll blow him away in minutes."

Last week was the trial. It went 2.5 days. I was the last witness to be called. On cross- examination, the plaintiff's attorney tried to demolish me, not on the basis of my report but on the basis of my not being a pilot with 7,000 hours of flying experience. As if that had anything to do with whether I understood the guts of engines. I do. I take the job of fixing them and giving FAA approval to repairs very seriously.

As if lives depended on it. They do. Those lives could be mine. They could be yours or those of someone you love.

It was an exhausting weekend before trial, inspecting parts on a Saturday in the lawyer's driveway instead of in a shop, parts we should have seen weeks earlier. Sunday, I had three worship services to be a part of. Monday was trial preparation. Tuesday the trail began. I slept little the night before the first day of trial. After some fallacious testimony by the other expert witness, I did not sleep at all before the second day of trail. I was the last witness to be called at the end of the day.

I was exhausted. There were many things I wanted to get done during my testimony that it seemed we did not have time for. I left the stand, after being attacked by the other attorney, feeling defeated.

But I had shown the jury something, something they could understand. They understood. They got it.

There was more back and forth on the final day. There was rebuttal testimony by the other expert in which he did not refute what I had shown but only dug his hole deeper.

Then, closing arguments, jury instructions and waiting. The plaintiff needed to have the jury accept their case as a preponderance (at least 51% of the evidence), and the jury of nine would have to be unanimous.

I was exhausted and dozing on the MAX train when the word came back from my clients:

WE WON, 9-0!

I came away with a whole new understanding of the story of David and Goliath. I had gone into the courtroom against a giant, dead tired and without so much as my slingshot. So I thought.

Our side went in as people of integrity, people telling the truth. We left the courtroom the same way. Even if we had lost the case, we would still have had that.

But the jury saw the truth and rewarded it. Justice was done. Sweet justice.

Best of all, my friend who is 68 is retiring. He had just sold the business to his younger brother before the trial. Tomorrow morning, he and his wife leave on a five-week vacation across this country, seeing our beautiful land, visiting aviation colleagues from coast to coast and many places in between.

Norm hired me 32 years ago. It was 32 years to the day this past MOnday that I first arrived in Oregon and pulled into the parking lot a Troutdale Airport. What a sweet fulfillment that Norm and his wife are able to embark on this vacation truly free of the ill-founded lawsuit and its mental and financial burdens.

Many people were praying for us and for me. Only one thing to say to that:

Thanks be to God!

Roger