There are so many of you that
are suffering from intense below freezing cold right now. Many without power and my prayers go out for
you – especially those that are not used to such winter storms.
Our poor little Toyota still
sits on a street below our house, it just is too low to the ground and can’t
handle the icy driveway to make it up here.
But, as I watched Carla go down
the hill, on our driveway, this morning in the ‘family’ 4X4 pickup, I was very
much thankful to Rich for allowing me to purchase it from him.
For those who haven’t heard how
it became a ‘family’ pickup.
It was originally owned by
Wheeler Communications. They did all the
radio work for the City Police and Sheriff’s Office – along with other public
entities and private companies. They
maintained the towers to make sure they were working right and would go up in
the deepest snow if there was a problem with one of them.
They put it up for sale. Jim, one of our sergeants, purchased it.
He was getting ready to leave
the area and decided to sell it.
He sold it to Rich at Cascade
Motors. Rich has been the Sheriff’s
office mechanic for over 25 years. He
has been our personal mechanic for at least that length of time.
He put it up for sale.
Carla and I purchased it. Thus, the ‘family’ pickup.
I did learn one thing however,
when buying a used vehicle you want to make sure the person you are buying it
from is reputable. When we first bought
it several people commented on the fact they knew it used to be Rich’s.
He IS reputable, but I got to
wondering what would happen if I bought one from someone that was much less
‘reputable’....even if I didn’t realize it, especially with my background.
------
Job asked:
Job
28:12 But
where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of
understanding?
And
was answered, after several statements, summing it up:
Job 28:28 And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord,
that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.
Many equate wisdom with old age;
however, many of us are living proof that is not always ‘wise’ to do so.
Others look at their Gurus, or
some other ‘wise’ person who seem to have wisdom, but lead their followers to
destruction.
There are the scientists that
have immersed themselves in studying the world and all its wonders, and come to
the conclusion that it all just happened, there was no guiding hand.
King Solomon wrote:
Proverbs 1:2-7 To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of
understanding;
3 To receive the
instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and
equity;
4 To give subtilty to
the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.
5 A wise man will hear,
and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise
counsels:
6 To understand a
proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark
sayings.
7 The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and
instruction.
I ask, in genuine concern, how
can a person possibly look at a complex part of any animal, any plant, bug, bird
or the hand in front of them and not realize it was designed by a Creator?
Then I am reminded of MY
training.
One of the first things we
learned at the Basic Police Academy is that people see things differently. Whether it be an accident or a serious
crime.
It isn’t that they are lying
(most of the time) it is just they have learned to look at things from different
perspectives; some have no observation skills, while others are quite good at
it.
How they feel, where they were
standing in relation to the incident, their background, age, gender, and many
other things can influence what they saw.
Just because their statements
are different doesn’t mean they were lying, it often means they only saw through
eyes that were not used to the trauma of the scene.
As a matter of fact when you
hear witnesses telling you the same thing in almost the same words, you look
deeper, because they have often coordinated their statements for one reason or
another, and most of those reasons are not good.
It is also one of the reasons we
separate witnesses, we want to hear what they know or saw, not tainted by
someone else’s statement. If they are
unsure they can be swayed and the other person may actually be wrong and not as
correct as the first person.
Now, you have to remember the
next example comes from the early 1970’s when all cars didn’t look alike.
Our instructor gave us two
witness statements from a hit and run accident report; one from a male teenager,
the other from an elderly lady.
The teenager could give you the
exact color, year, make and model of the car, the lady didn’t even have the
color correct.
The investigating officer didn’t
question the veracity of either person.
I don’t recall all of the
statements by either party, although the above stuck out – the lady had made
some observations that the teenager had not noticed.
Neither lied. The officers pieced together the statements
and identified a suspect who was later charged and convicted.
In the streets I often found
myself recalling that class, because it was so true.
Those of us that trained with
Jack Linderman became better at observation skills. He saw, literally everything; and he would
test us. One of his ways was to put out
little messages in the snow in your patrol area and ask us a question a couple
of hours into our shift – knowing we had gone by that location, if we didn’t
have an answer, we went searching until we found it.
While not the most observant
person, I did learn to take in a bigger picture than what was just in front of
me.
I had a new recruit read my
report of an incident we had investigated and asked how I could have possibly
seen everything. My answer was, ten
years on the job; you learn what to look for, who to watch, even the smell and
taste of a crime scene.
Not always are you conscious of
everything until you sit down and put pen to paper, but your mind has captured
all or at least most of, the details.
But we do get tunnel vision,
also. I can remember sitting in a
restaurant with Carla, a Pastor friend and his wife. Both the Pastor and I sat with our backs to
the wall so we could see the entire establishment.
His wife said, laughing, ‘You,
are looking for the sinners, while Ron is looking for the saints.’
I didn’t quite understand what
she was saying, but as I gave it some thought she was right, I was looking at
people who might harm other people in one way or another. Ignoring the others, for the most part.
By the way, I did make a number
of off-duty arrests. Poor Carla and the
kids were stranded somewhere more than once as I made an arrest and waited for
an officer to come.
They were even stranded for a
few minutes on HWY 97 below Shaniko as I dealt with a suspect and had to drive
him up the road to where the crime scene was and give him to the investigating
deputy. They weren’t there long before I
came back, but they were there - a mother and four kids, one a toddler, standing
on the shoulder of the road, can’t imagine what passing motorists thought.
As a Christian, I am not blinded
to the world. Oh, I may not have a
formal education in the sciences, but I can see.
But what I see - in everything I
see (including the ability to see) is a Creator; God who
created all things.
It is hard to understand how
people can look at these things, study them, finding out how complex and unique
things are and then not see a creative hand in them.
But, when I think of it, I also
remember my training – most are not lying for whatever reason they really
believe that their religion of evolution is based on fact and that everything
evolved from basically nothing.
They are blinded to the things
of God, deliberately blinded by satan’s wiles and what he has done to the
scientific community.
Not all scientists are
evolutionists, as a matter of fact, many believe in a creator – not all believe
that is the Lord Our God, but they recognize that these things had to come about
through design.
I have read
articles/testimonials of scientists that were so overwhelmed at the complexity
of life that they turned to the Bible in explanation and came to the
understanding and acceptance that God created this world, satan polluted it and
Jesus came to free us from that world of sin that blinds us to the goodness of
God.
A wise man will hear, and will increase
learning
I am not wise, but I know men
and women that are and they are continually in God’s Word and drawing closer to
Him.
I have a long way to go, but, I
am told there is hope.
Later, Art (-:
