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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781546220152 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 12/07/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 118 |
| File size: | 205 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
Lesson 1
A Shepherd's Vision
Those loyal shepherds in Chaldea
Today the modern idea
For modern academia
Like Pilate in Caesarea
A spiritual diarrhea
Imagine yourself lost in a wild and strange country, all alone in a dark and secluded place, far from home and family. How will you cope emotionally? How can you find comfort and security? Is there anything you can rely on to find your way home? Can you even determine which way is north, south, east, or west? Such a situation is not uncommon for shepherds, who have concern not only for themselves but also for the animals over which they are given great responsibility and accountability.
Fortunately for the typical shepherd, experience has taught him that he is not alone. While his sheep graze peacefully along a hillside and his dogs walk complacently at his side, all nature seems to accept him as part of her own, and he knows he is in good company. Clearly he understands that he is not without risk or adversity, but he also knows that so long as his life is in harmony with his Creator, he will be protected.
An ancient Islamic story tells of an old man who invested all his money on his young son's education by sending him to school under the tutelage of the great scholars of that age. Several years later, on the day of his son's return, the old man looked into the young man's eyes with great disappointment. "What have you learned, my son?" the father asked.
"I have learned everything there was to be learned, Father," he said.
"But have you learned what cannot be taught?" the father asked. "Go, my son, and learn what cannot be taught."
The young man went back to his master and asked him to teach him what cannot be taught. "Go away to the mountains with these four hundred sheep, and come back when they are one thousand," said the master.
The young man went to the mountains and became a shepherd. There, for the first time, he experienced a lasting silence, with no one to talk to but the sheep. Out of desperation, he would talk to the sheep, but they would merely look back at him as if he were stupid. Over time, he began to forget his worldly knowledge, his ego, and his pride. Ultimately, great wisdom and humility came to him.
Several years later, the small band of four hundred sheep had increased to one thousand, and the young shepherd returned to his master and fell at his feet. He had learned what cannot be taught.
Throughout the history of mortal man, some of the most important lessons have been obscured by distractions. During the night of our Creator's birth, only a few wise men recognized the significance of the new star positioned over the city of Bethlehem, and only a few hillside shepherds received the glorious truths from the multitude of heavenly angels that burst forth in singing, "Glory to God in the highest." Still today, the noisy and busy world in which we live would place a veil between our natural eyes and nature's important life lessons, which cannot be taught through worldly influences alone. Consequently, we fail to learn those lessons that are spiritual in nature and require something more than cerebral capacity, college degrees, and worldly experience.
Whether we realize it or not, we all live in a strange country, far from our premortal home, and we can easily become lost. Our Creator is aware of each of us. He is devoted to our daily support and care, and He provides daily direction for those who desire to receive it, not only through the trials of this life but in preparation for life after death as well. William Wordsworth (1770–1850) described our temporary residency in this mortal life as follows:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
All temporal and spiritual forms of life bear record of our Creator's supernal hand in the affairs of humankind. His natural creations are laid out and governed in such a way as to provide valuable lessons for those who desire His guidance in pursuing and achieving their potential. Nature is filled with lessons of life that, if followed, will lead us to a state of endless happiness and peace. By studying His physical creations that we can see, we can better understand His spiritual creations we cannot see. From this study, we can learn lessons rarely taught in the great universities of the world — lessons that are comprehended only by those subtle, quiet whisperings to the inner core of our souls. These lessons can be neither proven nor disproven by academics, who are inclined to regard such matters as foolishness and to ignore and discredit the counsels of their Creator, the great architect of the universe.
Despite this disregard, modern academics do accept various lessons that are physical in nature and that can be studied without reference to the source of their existence. For example, textbooks describe how the heavens can provide physical direction, as many land travelers and mariners from past generations have learned. During the day, due south in our northern hemisphere can be determined by the direction in which the sun is at its highest point in the sky as it slowly emerges from the east and fades away in the west. For the nighttime traveler, the same can be said of movement in the sky of our moon, or any other planet or star except the North Star, which serves as a constant. The axis of our earth is pointed almost directly at the North Star and, consequently, is situated almost at the center of the wheeling circle of stars in our northern sky. Throughout the night, the North Star does not rise or set but remains very nearly in the same location all year long as the other stars circle around it.
Yet many will ask, "Who needs these heavenly means of direction among today's civilized populations? Unlike the traveler of the past who relied on natural objects to find his way, who needs this method of guidance in our artificial, man-made environment? We have detailed maps, roads with well-placed signs, and even minute-by-minute computerized technology cleverly placed in our modern-day modes of transportation to guide us to our various destinations." And many will point out that the hiker and the voyager can access the sophisticated global positioning system for pinpointing their location within a few feet of virtually anywhere on earth.
The carnal mind is oblivious to the answer to this question. Those who view life solely through the prism of worldly pursuits are satisfied with achieving their temporal destinations and think they need no other. Many who receive college degrees consider themselves enlightened and self-reliant, but they fail to recognize and appreciate that they are dependent upon their Creator, who has provided not only every breath of air that sustains their mortal lives but also their very existence. In the end, their self-proclaimed wisdom barely elevates them above the intelligence of a fool, and it will profit them nothing.
Everlasting fulfillment is not achieved by relying solely on man-made light or assumed knowledge that changes with the pulse of the times. Rather than trusting in the arm of the flesh, a wise and truly educated person will look toward the heavens for a constant, as is represented by the North Star. Such guidance is reconciled with natural law and does not change with the whims of society or the vote of a board. While the sophisticated educators of today may speak with power and compelling influence, the strength of their knowledge is as small as a gnat's eyelash compared to the vastness of our Creator's power and the depth of His understanding. Furthermore, when false or deceptively inaccurate ideas are spoken by modern-day professors as truth, their teachings can be physically and morally destructive.
Truly educated people know what they must do in every situation and will align their conduct with those actions, whether they want to proceed in that direction or not. Fully educated people will know not only how to make a comfortable living but also how to maximize both immediate and eternal potential for happiness and progress. Freed from reliance upon the temporary and finite creations of man, the wise person will seek out the knowledge and light of God as the way to refinement and endless happiness. To obtain such guidance, the wise need not look far, but they must look beyond the learning of carnal man.
We are surrounded with natural forms of life that quietly encourage us in the right direction. Nature will silently say, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." She will give you a small seed that, if planted according to nature's directions, will multiply a hundredfold by means no professor is fully capable of teaching or accomplishing on his own. But nature is also disciplined. If you fail to follow her directions, she will take back that little seed and let it die. So it is with our lives. We are the agents of our own destiny and will reap what we sow.
CHAPTER 2
Lesson 2
The Side We Do Not See
There's another side to living things
What makes the plants lean towards the sun
And how can the fish, both great and small
How can the birds in the skies above
Mammals and reptiles breath and smell
And so with man, a mortal being
As a shepherd sits on a rock while his sheep graze along a hillside, he stirs the dirt with a stick and opens the home of a little earthworm. Out of seeming curiosity, this small creature works its way out of the hole, poking its pointed head in all directions. Even though an earthworm has no eyes, the shepherd can see that the small critter is able to glean information about its surroundings through its sense of touch and its ability to perceive light.
The shepherd then asks himself, how can the educated scientists of the world claim to know so much about how life is created when they cannot even create a worm? If humans could somehow create the detailed and intricate cells that constitute the physical body of a worm and could then somehow piece them all together in their proper place, would they not still be at a loss as to how to give those cells the breath of life?
Sophisticated scientists may in turn ask, "Who is a lowly shepherd to dispute our complex laboratory experiments that demonstrate that living organisms evolve from nonliving chemicals as proof of a naturalistic origin of life?" Simple-minded people can provide a simple answer to this question. Science deals with what can be observed and reproduced through experimentation, but who created life in the first place upon which their experiments can be observed? Can anyone point to a scientist who can reproduce the nucleus of living cells, store therein significant amounts of information, and then endow those living cells with the means of processing that information? In a nutshell, what scientist can create a conscience that constitutes the spirit of a living thing? The simple answer is that, even though we appreciate what scientists are able to correctly teach us, no scientist can animate even a little worm.
Shepherds do not set out to prove or disprove anything, but this does not mean they are without personal convictions that go far deeper than fantasies of the mind. They know what their environment teaches them, lessons that are not taught at the feet of worldly professors. Nature is their school master, and it is not up to man to tell them what they know or do not know.
Naturalists commonly reject the reality of living extraterrestrial beings that cannot be seen with the physical eye, citing personal illusion, mass delusion, and "cultural viruses" as underlying causes for what they deem to be foolish beliefs. Others dismiss such beliefs as having a neurological basis, or something that the brain merely creates out of thin air as a backup defense mechanism. In 1861, a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis pronounced an unseen link between surgeons who did not wash their hands and the high rate of infection during childbirth, but his mainstream colleagues ridiculed him in similar fashion as today's naturalists. Yet this doctor's willingness to accept something that could not be seen at that time in history led him to find the first evidence of tiny single-celled microorganisms that later became known as bacteria.
As the shepherd continues to sit on the rock while his sheep graze, his dog jumps up and focuses his attention in a certain direction. There is no question in the shepherd's mind that the dog heard something his human ears could not perceive. Similarly, the shepherd knows that many animals can see things that 'are beyond the perception of the human eye. Scientists claim that spiders and many insects can see a type of light called ultraviolet that most humans cannot see. They also claim that other animals, like snakes, are able to see infrared light, which means that they can see heat. The shepherd concludes, "It's illogical to conclude that unless a thing can be discerned with our limited senses, such a thing cannot be real.
"So isn't it conceivable," the shepherd asks, "for a person to exist in spirit and to convey a message without the recipient physically hearing a sound or physically seeing an image? Does every communication hinge on being able to perceive through the physical senses?" The shepherd concludes, "Human beings cannot see radio waves, which carry huge amounts of information, but even I know that such waves exist, so an unseen spirit that communicates messages could likewise exist."
The shepherd then asks, "Is it a mere illusion when one undeniably senses the comforting presence of another being, accompanied by a feeling of calmness during a calamity, peace during a time of distress, or benevolence when all hope seems to have vanished?" Again he concludes that these feelings are not illusions. Shepherds, who live away from the noise and congestion of city life, find themselves in an ideal environment to take notice of such manifestations.
A shepherd does not need scientific proof to accept the existence of invisible realities. While it may not be possible to prove the existence of unseen beings through the physical senses, this does not mean that they do not exist. Belief in spiritual things generally boils down to faith, not blind or irrational faith, but faith nonetheless. As his Creator defines the word in His record, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In other words, faith is the assurance we can receive that a desired outcome will come to pass even though the evidence that we base that assurance upon cannot be proved through our physical senses alone. By way of example, a person exercises faith by planting a seed in the ground with the assurance, based on prior experience, that this seed will ultimately produce a beautiful, living flower. But that person cannot see what it is that gives this plant its life.
This living plant, the most beautiful of plant life's creations, leans toward the sun as it rises from the east and sets in the sky in the west. Like other forms of plant life, this flower not only embraces the light that shines, but it also depends on it to sustain life. But what differentiates a living flower from a dead one? What is it in a living plant that tells it to move in the direction of the sun?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Lessons of Nature"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Don F. Pickett.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
To the Youth of America, vii,
Introduction, ix,
Lesson 1 A Shepherd's Vision, 1,
Lesson 2 The Side We Do Not See, 7,
Lesson 3 The Universal Laws of Nature, 14,
Lesson 4 The Levels of Progression, 18,
Lesson 5 Weak-Rooted Foundations, 25,
Lesson 6 Struggle Begets Strength, 32,
Lesson 7 Shortcuts, 37,
Lesson 8 Why the Sky Is Blue, 42,
Lesson 9 The Sun Will Shine Again, 50,
Lesson 10 The Fate of a Mighty Tree, 56,
Lesson 11 God's Living Spring, 62,
Lesson 12 Nature's Greatest Gift, 68,
Lesson 13 God's Natural Law, 76,
Lesson 14 Perfection in Embryo, 85,
Lesson 15 A Sheepman's Last Words, 102,