Carla has a full day today,
don’t like seeing her put in 8 hour days, it just costs her body too much. Fortunately it is just today and then she
goes back to her 4 – 5 hour days. She
enjoys the work.
Rose’s goat did very well at
auction. First it was a prime specimen
carefully raised by Rose. Second Rose
worked hard to make potential buyers aware that she was going to be auctioning
her and that she would appreciate their bidding on the goat.
4-H auctions of animals are to
give recognition to the young person and help them. They pay many times more for the animal than
they would if they purchased directly from a farm.
They use it as a public
relations deed for their business. But
many also want to see what the young seller knows about the animal, what do they
feed it, how have they cared for it, the potential buyer will ask about the
different traits of the animal to be sold – all in the quest to award a hard
working 4-H’r.
Is the young person only
participating to get money, or have they learned something, the seller’s
character can make or break the sale of an animal.
Politics can also get involved
of course, the parents spend a lot of money at the business’ stores, etc. –
therefore the business wants to show good faith by purchasing that particular
animal. But by in large it is about the
seller and less about the animal.
Rose sells both herself and her
goat to the buyers. She makes contact
with business that are known to purchase animals at the fair – as well as trying
to get some interested in purchasing.
Some of those contacts are in person, some in writing – both with a
follow up card in the mail reminding them of the date.
Didn’t hurt that this year her
card had a very good picture of Rose and her goat, Rose is a pretty girl and the
goat was well groomed. On the back it
explained how she will place the money in her college fund and that she wants to
be a physical therapists working with those in the Navy that are injured. (I imagine that it includes the MARINES, for
which her father served, as part as the Department of the Navy.)
All of this is quite ‘legal,’
and even encouraged. It gets more buyers
there for everyone and they usually get more enthusiastic bidding.
Warming up again, hoping that it
doesn’t hurt the veggies in the garden. The garden is just starting to produce to the
point that we should be able to start canning and freezing within the next
couple weeks.
1 Samuel
17:4 And there went out a
champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose
height was six cubits and a span.
If I understand it correctly the
cubit was between 18 inches and 20+ inches, the Biblical standard being 18. The span is the width of the hand, I
think. With those things considered I
believe it would put Goliath’s height at about Nine feet. But he wasn’t just tall, he was large, big
boned and heavily muscled, a massive human being.
You have probably seen the
photos of Shaq (basketball player) taken with normal sized people, he indeed is
a giant compared to them, towering over them with his height and body mass – yet
Goliath had a similar body mass and was another two feet taller; An impressive figure.
In addition he was arrogant and
confident he could destroy anyone from Saul’s army. He boasted, challenged and humiliated the
Jews as he confronted them, mocking their fear and weakness and their God.
I learned early on in law
enforcement that people can appear much larger than they are. One night we had a call of a family
disturbance. On arrival, as we
approached the house the husband came out of the front door yelling at us, he
was huge, completely filling the door frame.
He appeared to be well over six feet tall and at least 300 pounds.
After we took him down I
realized he was only about 5’10” and around 200 pounds. His large size came in context to the door
frame, his anger and our surprise. He
appeared larger than he was; he appeared to be more powerful than he was because
our first encounter was his violent and imposing nature. He was bluff, trying to intimidate us and we
didn’t take the bait, instead we arrested him – and once he realized the arrest
was inevitable, while still vocal, he did not resist.
It was a good lesson. First, that most people are not as strong and
viral as they want to appear and will fold quickly when arrested. Second I could use my already larger size to
my advantage by being more assertive and confident.
One of the dangers I was told
early on is that some officers think the badge adds six inches to their height
50 pounds to their weight and makes them superman. If they aren’t careful they try to do things
that they wish they hadn’t. Instead of
waiting for backup they try to make an arrest only to find out they aren’t as
big and strong as they like to think they are.
Still the badge and uniform does
seem to make a person larger and that advantage can be used to take care of
situations quicker and often without violence.
While most of the people that
resisted or at least threatened to resist arrest were of normal size. They, like my first family disturbance, may
appear larger that they are at first, but once subdued we realize they were not
as threatening or as able to carry out their threats as would originally
seem.
Indeed we did have to take down
some giants, it was not easy and I don’t recall any of us doing it by
ourselves. We might be able to calm them
down and arrest them without incident, but it always helped when we had someone
to back us up and the suspect knew he couldn’t win. --- of course there was always those that
didn’t care, they wanted to get their licks in no matter what and would fight at
the drop of a hat.
What brought all this to mind
was observing an older man walking slowly down the street this morning. He was using a cane and an older woman was
helping him along. It was a man that we
used to have to fight every time we arrested him.
He had such a high threshold of
pain it, we usually had to have two or three officers to subdue him, and he was
only about 5’8” and wiry. He was proud
of the fact that it took that many to defeat him. His drinking, carousing, fighting, prowling
and drug use caused him to come into contact with us much more often than other
characters. (He is how I learned to look
up when searching for a suspect – he loved to climb trees and watch as the
officers looked for him, but never look up.
He got away from more than one of us using that tactic.)
But we took him in every time,
at least those times we found him. It
may have taken a couple, three or four of us to do it, but he always went to
jail. He couldn’t win, no matter how
many times he tried.
Satan is not much different than
these men I have written about. He can
appear huge, a veritable giant whose power and strength appears to be far beyond
our abilities to overcome him.
He can appear to be of normal
size and if we aren’t careful we can be deceived by the violence he is capable
of and will use against us.
But we never face him
alone. We have backup in the form of
angels watching over us and the Holy Spirit protecting us, giving us the wisdom
of dealing with the temptation satan lays before us.
On far too many occasions than I
like to admit, my problems took on those gigantic sizes in my mind, I dwelled on
them, I worried over them – only to find out they were much smaller and weaker
in reality than my mind and the situation had seemed.
1 Peter 5:7-9 Casting
all your care upon him; for he careth for
you.
8 Be sober, be vigilant;
because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom
he may devour:
9 Whom resist stedfast in
the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren
that are in the world.
Satan’s anger and strengths are
real and not to be minimized. However,
they are not as strong as two or more Christians who have each other’s
back.
And certainly not as strong as
God who promises to be with us as we are confronted by satan’s wiles.
We must not allow our
imaginations to go wild and to imbue satan with power he doesn’t possess
forgetting the Lord our God who does possess all power necessary to defeat
him.
We need to be vigilant and wary,
but not so fearful that we cannot complete the mission laid upon us by God.
Later, Art :-)
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