Gone to be with Jesus

Dorothy Elizabeth Schnaith

1919-2011

The Passing of a Saint

Acts 17:25b
...since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.


My family and I were able to witness something quite remarkable yesterday. We witnessed the above verse happen in reverse beginning with the taking away of everything, then breath, then life. 

My wife's Grandma Dorothy was brought to Jesus yesterday. And we had the remarkable blessing of being there when she took her last breath; then her last heart beat. 

We arrived yesterday morning at the hospital to see Grandma laying perfectly still on a bed. She was breathing slow and heavy, yet peaceably. All had been taken from her except her breath and her life. Her family was gathered around her yet I am fairly sure she did not know it. 

After a few hours, my wife, as she was looking at her Grandma take her last breath said, "she's not breathing anymore." Everyone in the room watched on. Dorothy's only daughter touched her neck quite softly and said there was still a slight pulse. She then walked out of the room to get the nurse. The nurse came in, checked her pulse, turned on her heel and embraced the one who just lost her Mother and friend. 

Dorothy had lost everything, then her breath and lastly her life. But what we may see as loss, she most assuredly experienced as gain. We bring nothing into this life except the soul and body given us. We leave taking nothing with us, not even our body, just our soul. 

Dorothy was an amazing woman. My family is so much the better because of her. She has taught my wife to cook, and to love and serve her husband. To be honest and truthful in all her endeavors. She has taught my daughters to sew, knit and demand perfection in the things they make.  She has shown me the importance of leaving a godly legacy. 

Dorothy has longed for a couple of years to depart from this earth and be with Jesus. You finally have your desire Grandma. We love you and will miss you greatly. 

The David's

Not lying, or a lunatic; any other option?

     I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 

     We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said, or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form. (C.S. Lewis)

I am reading this morning John 14. Here are two statements from Jesus...

     6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." 

     9b "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."

I was reminded of C.S. Lewis' argument I heard a few years ago and thought I would share it with you incase you haven't heard it. Can you imagine coming up to me and saying, "Scott, you say God is real, you say you know Him; well then, show me God the Father!" And I say to you, "hey look at me, when you look at me, you ARE looking at God!"

If that statement came out of my mouth, I would either be a liar (because I know I am not God, but am telling you that I am). Or I would be a lunatic (because I am telling you that I am God, and I actually think that I am, but I am not). Or I am Lord (I am exactly who I say I am).

Who do you say Jesus is?

How do I know you have a Mind?

(1 Peter 3:8a) Finally, all of you, have unity of mind,


(Proverbs 28:26a) Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,


I am sitting at my desk this morning and pondering again the Proverbs passage. If I trust in my own mind, I am a fool. Does this mean that I am not to trust in the basic reliability of my senses? Yes and no. I think it means I am not to trust my senses in an ultimate sense. My senses are good and God given, but I am not to trust that they are the standard or the source of truth.

Again, I read that if I am trusting (in the ultimate sense) in my own mind, I am a fool. OK. So now, you come down in my office and sit down across from me. You read the same verse I am looking at. You read that if you trust in your own mind, you are a fool. So now I know that I can not trust in my own mind, and you know you are not to trust in your own mind. Am I to then look across to you and trust in your mind? Why would I? You yourself just found out that you couldn't trust in your mind, why should I trust in your mind? Now say the rest of my family came down here and read the same verse. How about one by one everyone in the state of Minnesota? Everyone in the country? The world? Get my drift?

Lets go farther. I pull the theologian Jonathan Edwards off of my shelf and begin to read what he has to say. I have his mind in front of me even though he is long dead. Do I trust in his mind? How about if I pull Plato's writings from the internet? What about I bring my Bible and go sit in front of your Pastor? The Pope? The writings of Mohammad? The Chinese philosopher Confucius? Wikipedia? The local news reporter?

How do we obey 1 Peter 3:8, and have unity of mind? There are so many different opinions of what truth is, how could you and I and all of the world have unity of mind? Well it seems to me that we would have to unify around one source of truth as the standard. One persons mind.

I am a Christian. I am one because God awakened my mind to see that it was bankrupt. It was unable to lead me to truth. He shows me daily that neither my mind, or anyone else's mind is the source of truth, except Jesus Christ. You must trust in someones mind? Who's will it be?

Standing on Mashed Potatoes

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered. (Proverbs 28:26 ESV)


You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3 ESV)



The word "faith" is a confusing word these days. It is used over and over again by our media. "She is a person of faith." "You have your faith, I have mine." Faith is talked about as if it is something physical, tangible and objective in and of itself.

Let me give you a synonym for the word faith that will be helpful. Trust. Faith means the same thing as trust. Lets substitute the word trust for the word faith in the above statements. "She is a person of trust." "You have your trust, I have mine." Does not a question come to your mind as you read those sentences? Like maybe, trust in WHAT? Or trust in WHO?

I heard a statement a few years ago that stuck with me. Your faith is only as good as the object it is resting upon. You see, if faith is trust, and trust is aimed at an objective reality, it is important to determine what, or who my trust is in. I can have all sorts of trust in Santa Clause, but if the object is not trustworthy, or real, neither is my faith.

Is my mind objective? The mashed potatoes between my eyeballs maybe physical and objective (called my brain), but my mind is not. My mind is spiritual. So what does the above scripture mean, whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool? How do I trust in something spiritual and not physical?

Your mind is indeed spiritual. The thoughts you have also are spiritual. But to determine what you actually believe, we need to have some communication. Either you can speak to me with words that talk about something you trust in that is objective, or you can write these words down on something I can read. Words have meaning. Your specific words talk about specific things.

If I sit down and think about all the things I trust are true. I pull them from the file cabinet of my mind and get them out on paper so I can see clearly what it is that I believe is true. How do I know that the things I think are true, are actually true? Well, if I just say, "they are true, because I believe they are true," I am a fool. Where do my thoughts rest? What is the solid ground that my beliefs are built upon?

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. God has done exactly what I just suggested you do. He has taken his thoughts and put them on paper that is objective and real. The ink blotches on the paper are not the things to rest upon, but the reality those words point to. I am a fool, when I am trusting in my own mind as the source of truth. I have perfect peace when my mind is resting upon every word breathed out by God as the sole source of truth. The Scriptures are the mind of Christ.

How Shall a Man be Blessed?

Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. (Psalm 128:1-4 ESV)


One of the wonderful things about God is that He is not like me. You and I have been created in His image, but that image has been twisted after the fall.

If I were God, and I spoke the above verses; I would show that the only way to have my blessing was to fear me, and walk according to my ways. People would know who was a Christian, and who was not by looking at the family. If a man and woman married and had an abundance of children sitting around the dinner table, this was a Christian family. I was giving them their blessing and it would be obvious to all.

God says that thus shall a man be blessed who fears the Lord. Thus? In this way. This is the way that a man shall be blessed who fears the Lord. The blessing is to have a wife barefoot and pregnant, bringing forth gloriously beautiful children. And to have these children sitting around the dinner table in abundance.

The amazing thing about God is that He not only blesses the Christian man with a fruitful wife and an abundance of children, He does this for the non-Christian man as well. The non-Christian man is receiving a blessing from God, yet does not acknowledge God is the giver of the gift. And still, God does this over and over again.

If you alone had a certain skill. There was no else in the world who was able to do what you could do. Would you do this skill for people again and again and again without getting any credit at all. Actually most of the time you performed this skill for a man, he gave credit somewhere else. He used the fact that you performed this skill for him in secret, as a springboard for showing all the world that no one needs you at all.

Letting God be Lord over All

This is one of the passages of Scripture that convinced us that we should let God be Lord over the womb. He loves children. They are His blessing to us!


Unless the Lord builds the house,

those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early

and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,

the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior

are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man

who fills his quiver with them!

He shall not be put to shame

when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:1-5 ESV)