Still Not the Anarchists Cookbook

  A friend of mine has written something brilliant, and this brilliance grew out of an ongoing email discussion that we were having about government and its relationship to the Christian.   Now I feel I have to do some explaining to the readers who weren’t privy to the discussion, and also to do justice to his remarks.  This friend is genuinely one of the most thoughtful guys I know, and I’m not just saying this because he reads my blog. Even when we disagree, he makes me think, and what more could you ask?

  Although I do consider myself a libertarian, he does not. He wrote extensively on what he feels is a huge flaw in libertarian philosophy, and made some excellent points. He has been, in the past, highly critical of some people who espouse a philosophy of liberty but practice a philosophy of rebellion, and it’s an important distinction to draw since it is after all a condition of the heart.  His take on most libertarians is that they say what they say not necessarily because they want liberty, but rather out of resentment towards any sort of authority (2 Pet 2:19, 2 Pet 2:10).  I think that’s a valid observation, although it’s painting with a broad brush since any label you could pick  would cover a lot of people who may not even agree with each other.  But let me throw in my two cents, and we’ll see what happens.  I apologize in advance if I am just hitting the high points of my overall thoughts on this, but I’m trying to cover a lot of ground here.

  The source of all liberty is God (Luke 4:18, 2 Cor 3:17).  The source of all authority is also God (1 Pet 3:22, Dan 3:28, Col 1:16).  I believe in ‘natural rights’ although I’ve always found the term a little odd, because my rights are not derived from rocks and trees and rivers and streams, they come from God.  They didn’t  pop into existence in 1776.  I have the right to property defined as assets that are specifically mine and God weighs in with a commandment of “Thou shalt not steal”. I have a right to life, and God   confirms this with a commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.  God couples these rights with accountability to him as to how I use them.   After all, I wasn’t given eyes so that I could look at other men’s wives; I was given eyes so that I could perceive and marvel at his creation.   I wasn’t given a voice so that I could gossip, I was given a voice to praise him with. Since they are my eyes and my voice, I can use them either way, but I will give an account either way (Gal 5:13).  

  In the meantime, he institutes governing authorities in my life and over my life.  These range from my parents when I was a kid to my pastor to the local government to the court system to the federal government.  Some people are born to better parents than others just as some are born under governments that allow more freedom than others.  Some of these   authorities are temporary, like my parents.  Some of these authorities can be changed, like my pastor.  Some require tremendous changes, like expatriation.  But the fact is, somebody is always going to be in charge of you, to one   degree or another, and this is God’s will.

  When a people turn their back on God, generally speaking , they lose liberty (Prov 29:2). This is merely God withdrawing his favor from a people who do not want him.  People get the government that reflects their willingness to serve God.  .  He does this in a variety of ways.  Sometimes he allows corrupt people to seize the reins of power. Sometimes he allows an invading army to come in.  All of these reductions in practical liberty are a result of God’s judgment on people who have misused their initial liberty.  My favorite Biblical example is the Babylonian captivity, in which the children of Israel were rewarded for their idolatry by having a barbarian horde drag their children off in chains.  This judgment went on for 70 years, and people saw their children, and grand children and great grandchildren grow up surrounded by idolatry because they had loved their idols so much. They had misused their liberty, so God took it away.  But it would be incorrect to cite this as an example that God is against liberty.  God is for both liberty, and authority, as they both work hand in hand in a people whose heart is after God.

 If all that’s true, and I believe that it is, , then the real issue isn’t what Obama is going to do. The real issue is what are you going to do. If you are really in favor of liberty, then you have an obligation to live right, and obey the whole counsel of God, not just the parts you like or the parts line up with your philosophy (Psalm 119:45).  The strong  (and frankly mystifying) anti-God streak present in a lot of libertarian circles is the Achilles heel of the modern liberty movement, and it is quite likely the reason why  we have not seen the sort of success God gave to the colonial Americans in re-establishing liberty.

  So what, as a Christian, should be my position towards the authority God has put over my life?  Should I be shouting for its overthrow?  Should I be instigating violence against it?  Should I browbeat and belittle it at every opportunity?  Scripture is pretty clear on this.  I am supposed to live the best life possible under my current situation, with the idea in sight that I will give account to God as to how I lived and fared under an oppressive corrupt system ( Eph 6:1-10).  If I am in a position of authority, I should strive to be just. (2 Sam 23:3, Heb 13:17).  I should police my own life to ensure that I am not the part of the reason for God’s favor turning from us.  I should pray for the authority over me, not send out mocking emails (Jude 1:8).  In those prayers, I don’t ask for their death, but rather that God will turn their hearts (Matt 5:44, Prov 21:1).  In the meantime, I should try my best to live out the commandments of God as much as I can, and live under these temporary circumstances in light of an eternal reality.  And for the record, I’m not particularly good at anything I just listed. I probably have a lot more rebellion in my heart than I realize.

  Now I currently live under a system where I still have some  ability to at least make my disagreement known.  I have the right, under this authority, to protest policy. I have the right to call my Congressman, to vote, to make my voice heard.  It is legitmate to point out when those in authority overstep their  authority, but I don’t have the right, as a Christian, to rise up against what God has put over me (Titus 3:1).  I am not required to be a yes-man or a lapdog to corrupt men, but I must be very careful as a Christian to not step over from disagreement into rebellion.  I could go a bit further into where I think that line is, but that’s a topic for another time.

   I also have friends  who are  'anarchists' and 'stateless libertarians'  and 'anarchocaps' and all sorts of other interesting labels. I encourage them to  look up the verses, and by all means join the discusion.

The Work of an Evangelist

“But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions , do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.”  2 Tim 4:5

  Here, Timothy the pastor is getting some last minute instructions from his father in the faith, the Apostle Paul.  In addition to being told in other passages to “reprove, rebuke and exhort with all  long suffering and doctrine”  he is told to do the work of an evangelist.  In addition to continuing on in the things he had learned, he was to do the work of an evangelist.  While being strong in the grace that is in Jesus Christ, and committing the things he had learned unto faithful men, he was to do the work of an evangelist, and in doing so, his ministry would be proved.  In fact, without doing the work of an evangelist, there would never be a “full proof” of Timothy’s ministry.  So what is the work of an evangelist?

  If you ask the   average church member to define the work of an evangelist, at least in my circles, I have no doubt what the answer would be.  The answer would be that an evangelist travels around the country preaching to  mostly  church folks at revival meetings and mission conferences and youth rallies and prophecy conferences and tent meetings and just about any other place that will have them.   They travel from place to place and live off of the offerings that are taken up at these meetings as they try to encourage, strengthen and edify the brethren.  There is nothing wrong with that, but that cannot possibly be what Paul meant here, because it would have been impractical, and maybe even impossible, for Timothy to pastor a local assembly while traipsing all over the countryside preaching everywhere else.  So what is the work of an evangelist?

  The Bible actually only refers to one person as ‘the evangelist’ and that is Philip the evangelist in Acts 21:8.  Not even Paul receives such a title.  So rather than accept our modern usage of the word, I think it behooves us to take a look at Phillip and see what’s different about him, and  from there, decide what the work of an evangelist really is.

  In Acts 8:1-14 we have a great work going on between Jerusalem and Samaria. This is no doubt an exciting time. Literally every ‘big name’ preacher in the world at the time is there.   But God never referred to any of those other   guys as ‘the evangelist’.  Instead, in verse 26 God   takes Philip away from all the exciting ministry work and fellowship and dispatches him to the backside of a desert to ‘preach Jesus’ to one guy who doesn’t even have a name recorded in scripture. Phillip was out there where nobody could see him. Nobody could take up an offering for him, and nobody could pat him on the back for what a good job he had done or was a powerful preacher he was. He was sent out to do this with no recognition and no spotlight.  That work is what earned him the title of ‘the evangelist’.

  So in our  modern time we have people claiming the mantle of 'evangelist' who spend their entire ministerial career preaching to people who already are saved and who already agree with them. There are no trips out to the backside of the desert to give the gospel to a nobody, or a group of nobodies.  They run from meeting to meeting and talk about what a great job they are doing for God.  What they are actually doing is preaching to a voluntary audience for pay instead of an involuntary audience for free.  They will preach the revival meeting, but not give a tract to the lady at the gas station when they stop to gas up.  They will hang out and play golf with their preacher buddies while waiting for church to start that night without trying to reach a single lost person.  They won't stand out in the highways and byways of whatever town they are in and compel the lost.  They won't even  go door knocking.  Then they will have the audacity to  stand in front of the pre-assembled crowd that already is saved and already agrees with them and call that 'evangelism'.  They will preach their convictions or just a 'stir em up ' message and say that's 'preaching the gospel', when it plainly is not.  According to Paul, people who do that will never have a full proof of their ministry; there will always be something missing from their ministry.  They will have no perspective on how much the average person is opposed to the gospel.  They won't be bearing any reproach.

  But they'll have one heck of a golf game.

Repentance that Moves God

 “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served not him.  And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon.  And that year they vexed and oppressed the children of Israel: eighteen years, all the children of Israel that were on the other side Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead.  Moreover the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also against Judah, and against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim; so that Israel was sore distressed .  And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, saying , We have sinned against thee, both because we have forsaken our God, and also served Baalim.  And the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Did not I deliver you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines?  The Zidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Maonites, did oppress you; and ye cried to me, and I delivered you out of their hand.  Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: wherefore I will deliver you no more .  Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen ; let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation.  And the children of Israel said unto the LORD, We have sinned : do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee; deliver us only, we pray thee, this day.  And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the LORD: and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.” Judges 10:6-16

  One of the most terrifying aspects to God’s personality is how he will sometimes give people exactly what they want.  Despite the commandments given by God, the children of Israel had an idolatry problem. Throughout their history they found themselves over and over again drawn away  of their own lusts and enticed. They chose the stone idols of the Canaanites, and the wicked  gods of the Philistines. Despite their unique history and their unique revelations from God, they chose over and over again to bow down to the gods of the nations that surrounded them.  God would send a prophet, and things would reform, for a bit, but they always returned to the idols.  Instead of loving and cleaving to the God that had brought them out of Egypt, they instead snuggled up to a god that demanded the sacrifice of their children. 

  So God decides to give their heart's desire, and he sells them into the hands of their enemies. For 18 years the Ammonites and Philistines oppressed them, and although it must have been fun at the beginning to be out from underneath ‘all those rules’, oppression is  still oppression, and the Bible says that “Israel was sore distressed”.   They wanted out from under the yoke, and they did what they had always done; they cried out to the God of their fathers for deliverance.

  But this time, God tells them that this time will be different.  He will  not help them.   He challenges them to “Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen ; let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation.”   He tells them that "I will deliver you no more”.   Seven times he has rescued them already, and the end result was always the same.  God always got put on the shelf and ignored as soon as the crisis of the moment had passed.  This time they were on their own.  The one person in the entire universe that could help them has openly told them that he will not. Their last flicker of hope to get out from under the yoke of oppression just went out, and they have no one to blame, but themselves.

  You see, it didn’t impress God that they were unhappy.  Serving sin will always make you unhappy eventually. It didn’t really impress God that they cried out, or that they said they were sorry.  They should have been sorry.  They should have been broken-hearted over how they had treated him.  But the Bible says that “his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.”   What changed God’s mind?

  I believe the secret to moving the heart of God is found in the very beginning of verse 16.  It didn’t move God that they were sorry, it didn’t move God that they wanted out of a bad situation; what moved God was that they put away their strange gods.  One of the reasons we have so little victory over the sin in our lives is because we are willing to be sorry, but not willing to take the first step and put it away.  A man may be bound in the chains of alcohol, and he may hate the fact that his sin has cost him his life, his marriage, and his job. He may sit there in the dark and weep and cry about what a sorry old drunk he is, but as long as he sits there with that bottle in his hand, there will be no victory for him.  If he gets up and pours that putrid rot-gut down the sink and smashes the bottles, well now we’re going somewhere.

  Do you want to get God’s attention, and get God’s help?   Do you want to move the very heart of God on your behalf? Do you need his soul to be grieved over your misery? Then put away your wickedness, God will help you.   Pour out the whiskey, shoot the TV, and throw away your internet.   Stop your gossiping, quit your meanness, and put away your lying tongue.   Vomit up your pride, and turn away from your vanities.   Burn the  bridges,  tell the old crowd to  take a hike.Whatever the issue is, you know what it is, and you know what a stronghold it is in your life. Put it away and beg for God’s help to keep it away.   Commit open warfare against your sin, and in the middle of your first salvo against the enemy that you have served for so long, you might be surprised who shows up on the battlefield to help you, and ultimately give you the victory.   

God's Economy

God's Economy by Gerald Sutek

September 17, 2010 at 8:35am

Please feel at liberty to copy, post, forward, teach or live this brief essay.

HARD TIMES
VS
GOD’S ECONOMY

I first traveled to Europe in 1991 and since then have lived here for a total of nine years.  In Europe in ’91 there were as many different currencies and economies as there were countries.  This meant that if you traveled any significant distance you would run into money complications with each change of economy.  This is still largely true in Eastern Europe. I have traveled recently with four different currencies in my pocket. This is nothing less than confusion (1Cor. 14:33).

WORLD’S ECONOMIES NOT SIMPLE
My support comes mainly in U.S. dollars, but I pay my rent in Euros. We buy our groceries with Romanian Lei.  When I travel to Hungary I exchange for Florint, to Moldova for Lei, to Slovakia for Koruny, to Great Britain for Pounds, to the Philippines for Pesos (are you confused yet?).  I have to exchange for each of these currencies in order to function under each country’s economy.  It is neither simple nor cheap to exchange money and you lose money EVERY TIME.

GOD’S ECONOMY IS SECURE
Well, I have good news for Christians who trust God (Pr. 3:5,6). God has His own economy, and anyone desiring to exchange the world’s economy for God’s economy only stands to gain.  Like all things associated with God, the exchange is Simple, Stable and Substantive (Pr. 8:21).

The world’s economy is summed up in a few words, “Get all you can; keep all you get”.  But many years ago I made the switch from Hagai 1:6 to Luke 6:38 (go ahead and look them up).  God’s economy makes absolutely no sense to the world; but then the world’s economy makes absolutely no sense to God.

FIRST ESSENTIAL…GIVING
There are three basic, but essential components that must be in place in order for God’s people to operate on God’s economy.
1.    BOUNTIFUL BENEVOLENCE
2.    BLACK INK
3.    BEING CONTENT
Pardon me, I must use my family as an example because I know no other’s personal finances.  I learned to tithe while serving under Dr. Bob Gray back in 1969.  On my particular job, I got paid in cash about every hour (this would be both difficult and needless to explain). This made it easy to spend but I found it hard to find any tithe left on Sunday.  So I disciplined myself to put a tenth of my hourly pay into a jar every hour and set it aside.  It was an extra trouble, but in doing this I found a treasure, that being Philippians 4:19.  This verse is not a magical verse for everyone in any circumstance and for all occasions. It worked, rather, for those who were faithful to supply Paul’s needs as a missionary; read verse fifteen in the context.  Soon, after learning the basic of tithing, I learned to give to missions above my tithe. Our family’s missions giving has only grown and has never diminished through the years, so that although we, too, are missionaries on the foreign field our family missions giving would rival some small churches’ missions giving.

When the good Lord directed us to serve Him as missionaries in Northern Ireland, we had the lowest income of any missionary on our mission board.  We tithed first and promised to remain faithful in our committed support of many missionaries.  Northern Ireland was a very expensive place to live: e.g., when we exchanged our dollars into pounds we cut our income in half. Then, when we went to the grocery store, we cut it in half again.  Gas prices in NI in 1991 equaled five dollars a gallon.  We never went hungry, we had all that we needed, and we never were short on gas for the ministry.  We traveled throughout the entire island and also traveled to some extent on mainland Europe, preaching publickly the glorious gospel.  Luke 6:38 works!

Missions giving is very much a Bible principle and is very much blessed by the Lord.  The good Lord also has very much to say in His Black Book about benevolence to the “poor”, “widows”, and “the fatherless”.  We struggled with finding the “poor” as we served the Lord in America, i.e., just who are the poor and how can you really tell if their requests are genuine?  This dilemma was quickly solved when we traveled to the Philippines, Mexico, and Eastern Europe.  In these areas, the poor are much easier to distinguish.  We asked the Lord to show us who was truly poor, and when He did, we gave.  We were faithful to support the widows of graduated missionaries who were on our list.  We faithfully support orphans in two different third world countries.  These important ingredients add much nutrition to those in subjection to God’s economy.
Pro 10:4  He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.


BLACK INK
God’s economy does not mix with the world’s economy.   You must choose one or the other.  You cannot use the world’s economy to tickle your fancies by using credit, then turn to God and expect Him to pay off your credit cards with interest.  For example, the next time you want to buy something on credit, walk into the loan office and give the loan officer your Christian testimony first.  Then tell him you are a Bible believer and that you know Philippians 4:19 works and that Heb. 13:8 is true…butttttt then say, “Would you please loan me the money for this item, because evidently the Lord doesn’t want me to have it now.  He may not want me to have it at all, but I don’t care. I want it now, and I will agree to pay you any amount of interest that you demand.”  You might as well be honest about it.  After all, if you lie to them, or to yourself, you will just have that much more to answer for at the judgment seat of Christ. God pays sin debts, but He is not obligated to pay for presumptuous violations of His economy.  Many Bible verses deal with the violations of His economic rules and the dangers of indebtedness, but Romans 13:8 settles the matter.

GOD’S ECONOMY SIMPLY WILL NOT WORK…
if you leave out the vitally important ingredient of contentment.  The world’s economy is generated by the constant frustration of discontentment.  Every advertisement is a malicious, aggressive act of war against contentment (Hebrews 13:8, Philippians 4:11, 1 Tim. 6:6-8).  The battle rages as the relentless enemy routs weak, adulterous (James 4:4) Christians who are continuously, and willingly, deceived by a world that is never satisfied.  Discontentment with what a loving, all-knowing, and all caring Master and Saviour has freely provided is nothing short of a self-imposed addiction.  Most Christians could not sing the hymn, I AM SATISFIED without lying, even if their salvation depended on it.

GOD’S STABLE ECONOMY
Prudential Life Insurance Company advertised by showing a picture of the Rock of Gibraltar.  The caption read, “Get a piece of the Rock for your car…home…etc.”  Well, one of the best advertisements for God’s economy is that it is built upon the Solid Rock --and the world’s rock is not Our Rock (Dt. 32:31).  God’s economy has always been, and will always be, stable.

Missionaries are always concerned about the exchange rates.  Americans are paranoid about gas prices. Worldly investors check daily on the price of gold and the Dow Jones Average (whatever that is). Yet the Lord’s fingernails remain unmarred in the midst of any oil catastrophe, political wrangling, hurricane, or earthquake.  Did you ever wonder why the stock market suddenly goes down because there is a recall of widgets or another uprising in Tibet? Where is the connection?  Don’t you realize that the Mafia manipulates the stock market, inflating and dropping values as it profits them?  Who can possibly understand the decisions of the Federal Regulatory Commission?  Don’t fool yourself; their machinations and manufactured confusions are beyond the understanding of a graduate economist and are designed to play a vital part in the coming One World Economy.  If you think that any government or investment company has your best economic interest at heart, you are not loving the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Maybe if you had your investments in God’s economy, you might read His reports and check on the price of God’s gold first thing every morning just as you read the news for the Dow report.

ZERO UNEMPLOYMENT
Who ever heard of zero unemployment? God!  God is an equal opportunity employer and has a permanent sign outside His office reading, “NOW HIRING”.  I hear there is double digit unemployment in the good ole’ USA.  In some areas the unemployment has soared upwards to 20%.  Oh, my! What will we do?  Even Christians are having a hard time finding a job.  So you are out of a job and you have looked everywhere.  God has a solution for you, if you want it.  Go to the good Lord and tell Him your plight.  Be honest, and convince Him that you have sincerely tried to find work, but it simply doesn’t exist close to where your good church is located.  Then get a box of tracts and hop on your teenager’s mountain bike (that he doesn’t use anymore) and go pass out tracts with the same work ethic with which you served the world.  Do you really think God is going to use your services without giving you proper wages? You’re nuts!  Man is the one who violates clear scripture…not God.
Jer 22:13  Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;

Written by Gerald Sutek Th.D., Ph.D.
A foreign missionary serving the good Lord by faith.
www.streetpreaching.com

Our Guests

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and maybe it really was.  I was standing in the parking lot of the local supermarket when their vehicle came creaking by. It was a 1992 something-or-other, and it was towing behind it a small travel trailer of an even greater vintage. This travel trailer was festooned with   bumper stickers saying that abortion was murder, and  in between the stickers were  various handwritten Bible verses , mostly misspelled, and none of them King James.  The vehicle rolled past me and pulled up to the no-parking zone, where it proceeded to park.

  Let me be clear here;  I think people who take a stand for Jesus Christ are  few and far between, so if I see someone trying to be a witness, I want to  encourage them, even if they are doing a bad job.  With this in mind I closed my car door and walked over to where the vehicle was parked.  A heavyset woman was in the driver’s seat and I could see a small dog of some kind running around rapidly in the back-seat and yipping.  I walked up and she opened her door since the power windows almost never work on a 1992 something-or-other. I told her that I appreciated their camper, and   asked her if they were local (a question I already knew the answer to) or if they were just passing through.  She told me her and her husband, who had gone into the store, had a mobile ministry where they go and preach out in the open at various events.

  “So you’re street preachers?”

  “ Oh sure”

  “Well me too!” We chitchatted for a few minutes waiting for her husband to come out and finally I asked them what their plans were for the evening. She said they had none since they were between events, so I invited them to come to my house and eat supper with my family.  Keep in mind that I have no cell phone, and  payphones are  increasingly rare, so I now was heading  towards my house with virtual strangers in tow and no way to notify my wife.

  We arrived on the property and I instructed my new friends to hang out while I talked to my wife.  I said “Honey, good news! We have company!”  I then explained the situation and her assessment was clear. She said “So you basically picked up some strangers in the parking lot and brought them home.”  It seemed like so much less of a good idea when she put it that way.  But I gave her my assurances that everything would be fine and she began trying to make our meal stretch a little further.

  My wife, in addition to just being generally speaking a better human being than I am, is gracious to a fault, and she welcomed these people in and continued to prepare supper while we sat in the living room and talked.

  As the evening wore on, it became obvious that, although they were nice people, they were slightly crazy, with a host of hang-ups and grievances and issues.  The man hardly spoke a word while the lady gave her opinion on a wide variety of topics whether that opinion had been solicited or not.   She was frankly very argumentative, and I had to   politely hold my ground in my own living room.

 While I got kids ready for bed, my wife got a chance to talk, and at one point pulled me into the laundry room and asked “Did you even talk to these people before you brought them home?” She told me that the lady’s ‘testimony’ was that she had  gotten saved when she was 12 years old when a priest and  2 nuns held her down and she was slain in the spirit, then filled with the spirit with the manifestation of talking in an unknown tongue.  I looked towards the living room and said “Ok…….they’re crazy.” To which my wife replied “And you brought them home!”

  I had not really discussed how the evening was going to end with our guests, but with the temperature dropping, I felt I needed to offer them something. My wife had absolutely no interest in them sleeping in our house, and so I delicately inquired as to what their living arrangements were in the trailer.  I was told that all they needed was an electrical connection to run the heater and they would be fine out in the camper for the night.  I told them that, unfortunately, I wasn’t sure that we would be able to provide them any sort of breakfast in the morning.   The lady assured me that everything was fine, that she expected they would be back on the road first thing in the morning.  With that said, they borrowed a couple of DVDs, and headed out to the trailer.

  At 9 am, they were still there. At noon they were still there. At 3 in the afternoon they were still there. When I came home at almost 7 they were still there. My wife had graciously fed them 2 more times while they just sort of hung out on our property. It turned out their total collection of dogs numbered 7 and they had no place to go after they left us.  But my wife had endured a disruption of her life all day long while she waited on these people. It was revealed during the course of her day that this couple weren’t  married, that they were family of some sort, although I am certain she referred to him as her husband at least 2 times. My lovely bride had also endured criticism and opinions on almost every aspect of   her daily routine, particularly in how we took care of our animals.  The lady took to ordering my children around when my wife wasn’t there.   Through it all my wife was the very picture of niceness and graciousness.  She   fed them and cleaned up after them while teaching school and tending to her myriad daily duties. I cannot say enough nice things about how she handled it.

 By the time I got home, it was past time to deal with this.  I told them that we would be leaving for the evening, and it would probably best if they hit the road. They seemed sort of surprised and slowly gathered their things eventually   disappearing down the dirt road in their creaky old trailer.  I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they show back up one day.

  The lesson from all this is that, really at the end of the day, as awkward as it was, we got a chance to show some kindness to some odd people. Oh, and I was told by my wife that this will never happen again.