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Ramblings from Retirement – The Bigger they Are By Pastor Lee Hemen May 30, 2021 Have you heard the old saying “The bigger they are the harder they fall.”? Did you know that it is a reference to what occurred with a young shepherd boy and a military giant? His name was David and his advisory was Goliath. Recently there has been a real attempt at rewriting the history of our Nation. I was dismayed to recently read a story about how WWII would have been won within several months without D-Day or the USA getting involved. This simply is not true. We were a nation in the throes of Democratic socialism that introduced some of the largest budgets ever seen, until Presidents Obama, Trump, and now Biden. In fact, only WWII would bring us out of the malaise of a flat economy and joblessness we were suffering. It was the USA’s ability to retool, manufacture, and rebuilding so quickly that brought about the destruction of both Japan and Germany. Russia could not have stood up to the Nazi onslaugh...

Ramblings from Retirement – Who Is Your Neighbor By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 29, 2021 Sitting here this morning I did what I always do, I prayed for my neighbors. I pray for them by name and street address. I use the Bless Every Home app. You can also go onto their website and do it that way. I like it because I can edit the names to keep them as up-to-date as possible. I also try to walk three to four times a week throughout my neighborhood with my grandkids or by myself, for exercise and to keep up with what is happening in my neighborhood. I’ve met more neighbors on my walks, waved to them, said “Hi.” or stopped to talk with them. I pick up concerns and blessings which I pray for when I pray for them and this brings me to one of my favorite passages of Scripture. In Luke’s gospel we find Jesus speaking to a very intelligent young man: “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘What is written in t...

Ramblings from Retirement – Unity and Peace By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 27, 2021 I watched the movie Mortal Engines the other day. It is a post-apocalyptic movie about a mysterious young woman, Hester Shaw who emerges as the only one who can stop the giant predator city London on wheels devouring everything in its path. Feral, and fiercely driven by the memory of her mother, Hester joins forces with an outcast from London along with a dangerous outlaw with a bounty on her head. Thousands of years after civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic event, humankind has adapted and a new way of living has evolved. Gigantic moving cities now roam the Earth, ruthlessly preying upon smaller traction towns. It is a Chinese-backed film that was supposed to be a condemnation of corporate society but fails miserably on this score and instead is a perfect example of a socialistic society headed by a dictatorship. You know, just like communist China. Surprisingly there are those who actually th...

Ramblings from Retirement – Lost! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 10, 2021 Have ever been lost or have you had a child get lost? I’ve had both happen to me. When I was little, about 3 years old, my family was visiting the downtown area of the small town we lived near. They met another family that they knew and began talking to them and as they did my father reached over and placed me on the hood of a nearby car. No one thought anything about this in that era because cars were made a lot sturdier and out of sheet metal. It was a sunny spring day, the car hood was warm and I fell asleep. Waking up a short time later I realized that my family was nowhere to be seen. About this time a policeman came walking by and asked me if I was lost and where my family was. We were taught to trust any policeman. Shortly my family came running around the corner; my father first, then my brother, sister and mom. Of course they asked me where I had wandered off to but then realized that they were the ones...

Ramblings from Retirement – Take Time to Ponder By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 9, 2021 Before the birth of her first child my daughter was kind of scared; you could see it in her eyes. She did not know what to expect but everything turned out fine and she gave birth to a sweet baby boy. During the birth of her second child she was a little bit late in heading to the hospital, called me to rush over, and I helped her give birth to her tiny daughter there on the floor of her apartment. Her husband was rushing home as fast as he could. Her son helped direct the EMS and firemen to where the baby was being born. After both births it was amazing how she cuddled and kissed each newborn. My mother was not always what you would call a “loving” person however she would find the time to put together a picnic lunch, take us to the park, and tell us stories while eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the grass sitting on a blanket. As a young child she would have me sit next to her and ...

Ramblings From Retirement - Spare the Rod? By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 8, 2021 Mother’s Day is tomorrow and I’ve been writing a few remembrances about my mother. She stood at a mighty 5 foot 2 inches but she was full of life and none of us children crossed her. She could get a terror on in nothing flat and was not afraid to spare the rod. In fact I have planted lilacs in our backyard in remembrance of her because she loved them a lot, however they were also her favorite tool for “whippin’s”. More than once I heard from her say, “Here’s a sharp knife, now go out to the lilac bush and cut me off a sucker so I can whip you.” Now lest you think that she was being abusive, she was not. A few whacks was all it took to get us into a proper frame of mind. None of us suffered from her ministrations and in fact all of us learned respect and discipline from her. She would remind us that to “spare the rod is to spoil the child” which of course is not found in the Bible but we learn from Prover...

Ramblings from Retirement – Find Something to Do By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 7, 2021 As I was sitting here today I was again thinking about my mother. It is interesting that even though I am 68 and my mother has been dead now for quite a few years I still think about her often. I do the same with my father as well. Anyway I realized that she would often quote things that she thought were biblical, like a lot of folks do, that in actuality are not at all. One was when she would find us moping around desperately trying to find “something to do” she would remark, “The Bible says that ‘idle hands are the Devil’s workshop” meaning that if we did not find something to do and fast we would soon be up to no good and she would find something for us to do. Never wanting the latter thing to happen we would quickly find something to do. As I thought about my mother I was reminded of what Paul wrote the Thessalonians concerning hard work and idle hands: “For even when we were with you, we gave ...

 Ramblings from Retirement – Find Your Peace By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 6, 2021 For me there is nothing better in the morning than to sit listening to the squirrels chattering outside, the red-winged blackbirds singing, and the sounds of people mowing lawns while I begin my day drinking a black cup of coffee. I grind some Guatemala Antigua beans, make four cups of the smoothest tasting dark nectar there is. My mother taught me to drink straight black coffee. Except her coffee was often boiled in a pan of water on the stove and had the consistency of crude oil. Instead of pouring it you cut off a chunk and swallowed it whole. She would often let it cook on the stove or in her newfangled peculator all day as she wandered back and forth getting a new chunk in her cup. She learned to make coffee as a young girl in Wyoming cooking for cowhands. Lest you think it had a detrimental effect on her, she lived into her early 90’s and continued to drink plain black crude oil of coffee all...

 Ramblings from Retirement – Words Mean Things By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen May 5, 2021 Recently there was a video played on national TV that displayed a black woman pulled over by a sheriff deputy for driving while talking on her cell phone. She claimed she was a teacher, had her child in the car sitting next to her and luckily the officer had his own body camera filming the whole scene. By the way the officer remained completely professional, courteous, and did his job while the woman went totally berserk berating the officer with racial slurs, vulgar language, and name calling. It turns out she has a history of doing this and tired to file a police report of the incident claiming that the officer profiled her for no reason. Good thing the deputy had videoed the whole incident. I was reminded of when Jesus related to the crowd that “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyon...

Ramblings from Retirement – Forget About It By Lee Hemen May 1, 2021 I shared before that I’ve been going through pictures and stuff my mother had for decades at my brother’s house. A huge trunk now converted to four medium sized cardboard boxes. She passed away several years ago at the age of 92 and lived a pretty full life. She only had a 7th grade education getting her education in a one room school, lived in a circus tent in the Wyoming wilderness, survived the Kelly Flood in 1927 in Wyoming when the Gros Ventre River broke through a natural earthen dam caused from a mud slide several years earlier, and she could ride, shoot, and roll her own cigarettes with one hand. Later she left home at the age of 15 or 16 and followed her sister to Alaska, another wilderness. She worked in the newly built Coca Cola bottling plant and there met my father who asked her to marry him several times refusing him every time but the last. All of that to say this that she lived quite a life. However wh...

Ramblings from Retirement – Change Is Good By Pastor Lee Hemen April 30, 2021 As I was going through some old photos I got from my brother’s house I found some of an old dog we used to have; his name was Duke. He was a boxer and had the classic clipped ears and tail. Duke lived for about 18 years and was a good old dog but there was one thing he would do that was very hilarious. He would get downright contrite and embarrassed if you chastised him. He would hang his head, lie down, and roll his eyes and make light grumbling noises as if he were saying, “It wasn’t me, it’s not my fault.” My Mom would take great delight in asking him, “Duke! What have you done now?” even if had not done anything wrong he would be mournful, contrite, and go through his embarrassment antics. We would laugh and that often made him even more contrite. Now one thing that Duke loved to do was chase cats. He would streak after them like a madman on a mission. Duke would lose it all when he was chasing a cat. Ima...

Rambling from Retirement – Join the Flock By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 28, 2021 Today as I came home from our Men’s Prayer the birds in my front yard trees were singing so loudly you could hardly hear anything else. They seemed to be just full of the joy of being alive, free, and just being birds. Even though they were not all in sync or in harmony it was wonderful to hear and it got me to thinking about the Psalm we had just read and prayed about as a group of men. The Psalmist writes his listeners to “Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. (Psalms 95:1-3 NIV)” He invited others to join him in a cacophony of singing praises to God simply because He is God. The birds in my trees reminded me of the Psalmist’s words for us to join him in song. Like those birds who sing simply because they are birds ...

Ramblings from Retirement – Scaredy-cats By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 27, 2021 There is a little grey cat that lives next door that thinks she is a mighty bird hunter. In fact she has already killed at least 3 birds at my front yard feeder and at least 2 in the backyard. So we have begun to keep an eye out for her and when she heads into or across our yard we chase her away. The other day she was in the midst of stalking some finches who were feeding. In the middle of her final stalk where she was bunching up to jump I opened the door and hissed real loud. She jumped about four feet, twisted in the air, and ran off like she was shot out of a cannon. It was hilarious and reminded me of a passage that the Apostle Paul wrote his friend Timothy: “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV84)” Paul was writing a young pastor who was facing all kinds of struggles within the local church and outside of the churc...

Ramblings from Retirement – How to Live! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 10, 2021 There are some truly disturbing trends in Christianity today; one is where folks think that God just winks and smiles at their “discretions”, otherwise known as sins, and those who think that if they follow a set of rules or guidelines then they will be loved by God. Neither is correct and will result in a false sense of spiritual security that will ultimately end in eternal death. Peter writes believers when he tells them to “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’ (1 Peter 1:13-16 NIV84)” Sure the writer of Hebrews tells us that we are t “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be h...

Ramblings from Retirement – Get Dressed! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 9, 2021 Man it can be tough to try and get kids dressed, ready, and out the door on time. It can be especially if one of them is a preteenager (tweener) who moves at the pace of a snail or if one is so concerned about what she wears that it is impossible for her to make any decisions. Then there are the arguments about “why” “how come” and “where are we going”. I remember well when my father would come and tell us three kids to “Get dressed and ready to go. You’ve got five minutes!” My brother would grumble around bumping into things and looking for something clean to wear, my sister would gripe about that she didn’t have anything to wear, and I would just hop out of bed and get dressed and eat breakfast before the other two were dressed. I loved getting up and going places and you did not have to ask me twice. In Luke’s gospel he relates that Jesus told the crowds “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lam...

Ramblings from Retirement – Don’t follow the flock! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 7, 2021 I was watching a small flock of sparrows in my backyard this morning as they hopped and fluttered around the feeders we have out there and how they would all move at once together. In fact when a raucous blue jay flew in, because it was much larger and scarier, the entire flock took off in a flash of feathers and tweeters. As soon as the blue jay left, they all came back at once. This made think of how a lot of people respond to the world around them; they only react as the rest of the crowd reacts. If it is in fear then they are fearful, if it is to follow some convoluted idea they willingly swallow it, and if the rest of the group does it then they will as well. My mother would ask us as kids when we ignorantly followed the crowd, “If your friends jumped off a bridge would you follow them?” Now I know that God created a natural instinct in those little sparrows to protect them from predators...

Ramblings from Retirement – Worship By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 6, 2021 We just celebrated Resurrection Sunday, Easter for those of you who are biblically illiterate, and I noticed that we had several visitors even during our National COVID scare. And this got me to thinking about when I first began to Pastor and how frustrating it was when folks saw their church attendance as an afterthought. Attending their children’s sports programs, doing their hobbies, simply waking up and feeling like going to the beach or because it was sunny was an excuse to miss their church worship. It was frustrating because many of these same people would get their feelings hurt because they were seen as “visitors” by those who did show up regularly or when they were not asked to do certain ministries in the church because of their fly-by-night attendance. Now if you are getting your feelings hurt by reading this what does it say about your church attendance and why you feel you have to make excuses f...

Ramblings from Retirement – Better than a Lifetime Guarantee By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 3, 2021 If you have not learned the simple and hard lesson that there is nothing guaranteed in life you had better learn it fast. What the Jewish people understood was the fact that life was fleeting. Many hoped there would be an afterlife but most believed there was not and that you would just “sleep” in the bosom of Abraham forever. Jesus changed all of that though. Jesus related to Nicodemus, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven--the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, bu...

 Ramblings from Retirement – Disagree with God? By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen March 30, 2021 Can you disagree with God? Some folks erroneously think that you can never disagree with God but this is simply not true. Why would I say such a thing? As I was sitting here watching two raccoons trundle by my living room window I starting thinking about how raccoons are often seen as rascals and this probably is more about their natural masks and antics than their actual inherent behavior. But it also got me to thinking about how we can be rascals with God and if we can disagree with Him. We first find Moses arguing with God in Exodus 4:1 when he begins to argue that he is not the man to be used by God to turn the Hebrews back to Him and lead them out of enslavement in Egypt. Moses whines that the people may not listen to him, that he doesn’t have any skills, and that he has no proof to show the people that God really did entrust him to lead them into freedom. God gives him answers for every...

Ramblings from Retirement – Homelessness By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 28, 2021 We have seen a huge rise in homelessness in our Nation. There are many reasons why from governmental policies, addiction, education, age, and mental issues. Many have tried over the decades to “solve” the problem but have in many cases made it far worse. Recently a teenage boy in California designed and put together a homeless cart that converts into a place to sleep, store things, and can be easily wheeled around for the homeless. While his intentions are truly great what he is doing is contributing to the problem. Each cart costs around $200 to make. There are those who have given money to those who beg with signs by the roadside thinking they are helping but again they are acerbating the problem. Like many ministries that try to help instead encourage people to remain homeless by handing out tents, blankets, clothing or jackets. Now I am not saying that all people desire to remain homeless, because ...