Original Entry:
February 17, 2009
McMinnville, OR
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and
altogether righteous. Psalm 19:9
Two of the many guns
I have inherited are classic Ruger 10/22 rifles, which are famous for their innumerable
after market accessories. Sensing a need to connect more with my middle son,
Darby, we committed to remodeling the guns for his thirteenth birthday. For my grandpa’s
old rifle I purchased an aftermarket stock, heavy barrel, inexpensive scope,
and had friend adjust the trigger. For
the rifle my step dad gave me for 8th grade graduation, Darby
purchased his own scope, adjusted the rigger, bought 25 shot clips, we
bought a folding tactical stock as a
birthday gift.
I was schooled in
keeping my guns clean but it is an entirely different set of rules for these
small semi-autos. The extreme carbon
build up in the gun can cause them to gum up easily and great effort must be
made to keep the inside mechanisms clean.
Darby’s gun was so badly gummed up from years of neglect that when my
friend did the trigger work, he was surprised the gun could even fire.
I learned that the
inside of the gun affects the outside performance. Psalm 19:9 tells us that “the fear of the Lord is pure and
enduring forever.” I wondered at the
meaning of “pure” until I
looked up the same verse in the New American Standard, “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.”
In
other words the heart of any man who truly fears the Lord is pure, clean, holy
or blameless. The man who has deep
conviction regarding his God cleans the inside so that the outside may function
properly. This is unlike the men who Jesus rebuked in Matthew 23:27
with, “Woe to you,
teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed
tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”
The man who fears the
Lord does not need to pretend, play church, or put on a superficial Sunday
smile. He lets the inside do the talking
on the outside (Matthew 12:34-36). His life is an outward reflection of an
inward overflow.
He has learned to
keep his gun clean.
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
Matthew 5:8
