In 2000 I wrote my normal one-year goals, and I also wrote what I called my 2020 vision, my goals for the next 20 years to the year 2020. One of the principles of goal setting is that we tend to overset our short range goals and under set our long rang goals, and I definitely did that for my 20-year goals. I accomplished significantly more than I had envisioned 20 years ago for my life, in just about every area.

So 2020 is about to come to an end, and the question is how long shall I make my next set of long-range goals for. I am 72 years old, I feel good, have a reasonable amount of energy, and I still have passion and fire for ministry. I know that could end quickly with cancer, heart problems, or other health issues that are common to guys my age. I have gone back and forth on this. On the low side I have thought I will eliminate all goals except for one-year goals, and just take life now one year at a time. But that seems so chicken and short sighted. On the high side I have thought I will just go for another 20 years with my goals. My goals energize me and help keep me young or younger anyway. But 92 years old sounds a bit on the high side for having much energy and passion for teaching or preaching. I would probably set my goals for the last 5 years to major on ministry to seniors. I would probably have to learn how to do hospital calling and funerals better than I do now!

I have said before that I would make 85 years of age my target for doing ministry.

Joshua 14:10-12
Caleb said, “I am eighty-five years old today. I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Giants were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.”

That is 13 more years; I think I can do that. As Caleb said, “perhaps the Lord will be with me.” Or I could go for 16 more years and make it an even 60 years of Pastoring at JBC. That would make me 88 years old, that sounds cool.

Have you ever sat down and written what you want to do in the next 13 or 16 years? It was easier at 52 years of age to write 20 year goals than it is now to do 13 year goals, for sure. I want to write physical goals like bicycle trips. I have three really big ones planned and shorter one’s in between. I need to write financial goals. I opted out of Social Security when I started out in ministry and don’t have a retirement program so that goal or goals will be fairly important. I have lots of ministry goals in mind here at JBC that will gradually change as I become more and more of a backup player. But on the other hand I want to be faithful and responsible so as to justify getting a paycheck. I am thinking of husband goals, father goals, and grandpa goals. I also am thinking seriously about goals for my house and property. And of course I am thinking about fishing and hunting goals.

Writing goals is an intense exercise of trying to discern what God’s will is for your life. He has a plan for my life, He has goals already set for me, and I need to figure out what they are. My personal commitment to follow Him, to seek Him, and to serve Him with all of my heart is the key.

13 more years? 16 more years? I don’t know! I think I will decide tomorrow.

I had a memorable time this morning being part of our family in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Christmas morning. I got to read the Christmas story and then we had a prayer time and everyone took turns praying thanking God for the gift of Jesus and our salvation. We then had a great breakfast together of eggs, sausage, and toast. It brought back so many memories of our family opening gifts years ago as I watched my grandkids open theirs this morning. They purchased gifts for each other, and as each gift was opened, there were hugs and thank yous of appreciation. But the best fun was when the three boys had a nerf gun war with the nerf guns they each got as gifts. The action was in the downstairs room that Patty and I are using as a bedroom. Our bed served as a great place to hide behind and I and the chair I was sitting in also provided great cover. I was sitting in the chair in the corner reading and writing this as they ran around shooting each other. If they got shot, they had to be out of the war until they counted to 20. Occasionally I got hit with a wild nerf bullet, and I would then dutifully count to 20. 2020 has been a year full of frustrations, pressures, and disappointments, but it is ending super!

Proverbs 17:6 Grandchildren are the crown of old men,

Patty and I have 27 grandkids, and they all are exceptional, with great character. I hope I live long enough to see each one of them as adults and witness first hand what great things they are going to accomplish with their lives.

I got up, dressed warm, and went ice fishing with my son-in-law Philip, and his 3 boys this morning, and we had a great time. We drove about 30 minutes to a lake, drove out on the ice, and augered four holes in the ice. It looked like the ice was 3 to 4 feet deep from how far the auger went down. We set up an insulated tent over the holes, put some chairs in it, and started up the propane heater. We caught 30 trout in about 3 hours of fishing. When we caught them we would throw them outside the tent and they froze solid in a few minutes. We drove back home, put the fish in the sink, let them thaw out, filleted them, and had an awesome fish dinner.

When Patty and I were raising our eight kids we had 10 character goals that we trained them for. One of them was that they would be tough-minded, that they would have lots of grit. I was very impressed with my 3 grandsons this morning. It was about zero degrees on the lake and it took awhile getting the holes drilled, the tent set up, and lines in the water. The tent was small and all five of us were crammed into it. Wyatt accidentally stepped into one of the holes and ice-cold water filled his boot. Through the entire morning of fishing not one complaint was spoken. We ate snacks, caught fish, trash-talked, and had a wonderful time. I thought to myself, I have some tough grandkids, good boys.

That phrase has become one of the main mottos of the pro-mask crowd. It basically implies that if you don’t wear a mask you are stupid. It reminds me of the pro-evolution crowd who would say the same thing. ”oh, you believe in creation, you are one of those anti-science people.” Excuse me, have you actually read major scientific studies, let’s say two books on each view and arrived at a conclusion based on serious personal study or are you just parroting statements you have heard from other incredibly biased, prejudiced people. Some of the most intelligent scientists I know believe in creationism and have very intelligent, well thought out disertations on why they believe the way they do.

It reminds me of Proverbs 18:17
The first to plead his case seems right,
Until another comes and examines him.

I regularly have people give me links to the WHO and CDC as ”science” when I say something against masks, but when I give them my links or book titles that prove masks are worthless, they are immediately discounted as quacks or having been dismissed by real scientists.

Science is based on observable facts. An observable fact is, more are wearing masks now than ever before, and the virus is spreading faster than ever before, ”Yeh, but, ” and then all the supposed scientific excuses come.

In March Dr Fauci, the Who, CDC, and many medical journals were saying, ”We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection… In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”

Than in June everyone did an 180-degree reversal. The excuse given by public health authorities was that they had initially offered anti-mask advice only to prevent a run on masks that healthcare workers needed. In newspapers and on cable networks, pro-mask messages became the norm. “Overnight, masks have become a symbol of social responsibility.” In August the Washington Post said that mask rule breakers were narcissists and dangerous.

The Washington Post also wrote, ”A new study (yeh, right) has shown that people who don’t wear masks are no longer just dumb or self-centered, they are sociopaths: people who are unconcerned with adhering to measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 tend to display higher levels of traits associated with antisocial personality disorder, also known as sociopathy.”

There is plenty of scientific proof that masks don’t work, and very little proof that they do, but the media and government have decided to make mask wearing the solution to the problem. Why?

To be continued:

Recently I read this story recounted by Gordon Dalby. He told of a nun who worked in a men’s prison. One year she brought some Mother’s Day cards to distribute to any prisoners who were interested in sending cards to their moms. Word spread, and requests for cards began pouring in. The demand was so great that she reached out to Hallmark to see if they’d be willing to donate extra boxes of cards. That first year the warden drew numbers from a lottery to determine which inmates would receive the limited number of Mother’s Day cards. With Father’s Day quickly approaching, the nun got to work securing sufficient boxes of Father’s Day cards, and the warden announced a free giveaway to all who were interested in sending a Father’s Day card. Not a single prisoner asked for one. What are we to make of this story? What has happened to the God-intended bond between fathers and their children?

As a 72 year old man I can look back on my life and see so many good things, so many blessings from God that have made a huge difference in my life. Of all the positive forces in my life I think the most powerful was my Dad. It is interesting as I think about that statement because my Dad had a long list of negative qualities that should have resulted in just the opposite result. Dad wasn’t a spiritual influence in my life at all. He never read the Bible, I am not sure he owned one, went to church sporatically at best, and I never once heard him pray. Dad became a believer just weeks before the end of his life and I had the joy of baptizing him. All of my spiritual influence came from my Mom, because of her I never missed church, Sunday School, Bible camp, vacation Bible school, or Youth group. Dad was a very hard worker and the work ethic that I have had all of my life is probably my Dad’s greatest gift to me. He also was always very nice to people and treated everyone with great respect, and any chance he got, to help someone out, he took. The key gift he gave to me was his time. It wasn’t what you would call typical father/son activities, it was mostly just working together on the farm. He didn’t talk much but he would say little things all during the day that were like darts, they would stick in me and I have never forgotten most of them. I don’t know of anybody who tells more stories about their Dad than I do. It is my way of honoring him. I have told some of them so many times and every time I tell the story, it grows just a little bit, until they are almost ”tall tales.” I know that, and most who have heard them know that, but I don’t care, in my mind he is a super hero.

Patty and I leave for Fairbanks, Alaska today to spend Christmas with our daughter Shelly and her family. We have gone up and visited them fairly often in years past but never in the winter, so this will be a new experience. It most likely will be below zero in temperature and 24 hours of dark. We have six grandkids up there so we are expecting this to be a very enjoyable visit. Also, if it works out, my son-in-law, Philip, is taking me ice fishing. For all the fishing that I have done, I have never been ice fishing, so I am looking forward to this new experience.

Alaska requires a COVID test within 72 hours from boarding the airplane but don’t accept the ones you can get results on in an hour so we are waiting today for our results to come in. If they don’t arrive we will have to quarantine when we get there until the results are emailed to us. The literature that we read while waiting in the waiting room to get our test said that there were about 30% false-positive readings. If either of out tests end up being positive, we will have to take another one at the airport for $250 and quarantine the 3 to 5 days it takes to get the results. I was getting a bit cranky reading all this, and then I read some of the ”most often asked questions, ” and one of them was ”Where can we legally quarantine?” and one of the spots was a residence. No problem then, I can quarantine at Shelly and Philip’s house and out on the ice with a fishing rod in my hands.

Justin Hart on Twitter: “BREAKING! Do mask mandates work? Our analysis below. We looked at cases on days where mask mandates were in place vs when they were not. We calculated the cases per day adjusted for population and: WITH MASK MANDATE: 27 cases per day per 100K people NO MASK MADATE 17 cases 1/ https://t.co/IALibl5nmg” / Twitter
— Read on twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1340725086278434821

I have been reading a lot of books and material and listening to pod casts about the COVID virus lately. I don’t think much accurate information will be found on Google and Youtube because of the high amount of censoring done against anything not politically correct. There are a number of very smart people who aren’t in a position to profit from what they write who are looking at all the information and coming to conclusions that are much different then what we hear on the news or the media. A recent small book is entitled “Unreported Facts About COVID 19, Lockdowns: part 3 Masks” by Alex Berenson. Here are some quotes from the book.

June 5, the WHO had released a statement entitled “Advice on the use of masks in the context of Covid-19.” The paper ran 16 pages and included 80 footnotes and this statement: At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence. Less than 48 hours later they completely reversed their position because of worldwide government pressure.

In December 2013 the Canadian nurses’ union filed a grievance against the requirement for nurses to wear face covering. The case went to a neutral arbitrator, James Hayes. He heard thousands of pages of testimony from six expert witnesses, consulted 249 exhibits, and read more than 100 scientific papers. In September 2015, Hayes issued a 136-page ruling saying hospitals could not make nurses wear masks. The “scientific evidence said to support the [mask mandate] on patient safety grounds is insufficient,” he wrote. (https://www.ona.org/wp-content/uploads/ona_kaplanarbitrationdecision_vaccinateormask_stmichaelsoha_20180906.pdf)

A study done on particle size that people breath out and masks came to this conclusion, “In basic terms, masks have almost no chance of catching most of the particles we exhale.”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021850208002036)

In a paper published on Nov. 18, Danish researchers reported on a trial that covered almost 5,000 people in Denmark in the spring. The trial was carefully designed and executed, and the conclusion: Unless future large randomized controlled trials find different results, the Danish mask study essentially should end the debate if surgical masks protect people who wear them outside hospitals. As physicians and infectious disease professionals largely agreed, the answer is that they don’t. Anyone who says otherwise, for whatever reason, is being untruthful – and as of Nov. 10, that group, unfortunately, includes the Centers for Disease Control.

At the conclusion of the book the author asks the question, ”on the basis of such flimsy evidence that masks make any difference why would the universal use of them be pushed so hard by so many?” He comes to several conclusions but the last one is the one I have believed to be true for some time, ”But the worst reason of all is that mask mandates appear to be an effort by governments to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept on the thinnest possible evidence. ”

(This blog is a repeat of and modification of one written months ago with a different title)

Even just ten minutes of looking at pictures of the Nazi concentration camps where Jews were imprisoned during the Second World War is incredibly depressing not only because of the experiences that the Jews went through but also seeing and thinking about the cruelty and what people will do to other people.
The Nazi’s had a plan and strategy in mind as they inflicted incomprehensible cruelty on the Jewish people, and that was to get them to feel less than human.

The Roman invention of crucifixion wasn’t just to inflict pain, but to dehumanize a person in their death. Read the words of Jesus on the cross in Psalms 22:6-7,
”But I am a worm and not a man,A reproach of men and despised by the people.All who see me sneer at me;They separate with the lip, they wag the head,”
When I was a kid, I had a dog, and we took her to the vet to get neutered so that she wouldn’t have puppies and be attracting all the male dogs in the area to our farm. To keep her from licking on her wound and taking the stitches out, the Vet put a plastic cone around her neck. When people saw her, they would laugh, and you could immediately see her head go down, her ears droop, her tail go down between her legs, and she would hide under the bed. Even dogs have a sense of dignity and worth that can get damaged.

When I wear one of these darn masks I feel just like my dog, they are dehumanizing. I know many who sincerely believe that masks will help in the spread of COVID, and I honor their belief, but I personally do not believe they do any good at all. There have been many doctors who have come out and stated their views about face masks and have been censored and blocked from Facebook, Twitter, Google, and You Tube. A number of doctors have lost their medical license because they dared express their unbelief in face masks. I get accused of being prideful for the way I feel, and a contributor to the spread of COVID. Some say, “you use a seat belt and a bicycle helmet,” so just wear the mask, but the value of seat belts and helmets is obvious to me, I would practice those precautions even if it wasn’t a law, and wearing a seat belt is not dehumanizing. And again, I am in no way convinced of the value of wearing a face mask. I am pretty sure that if people were asked to walk around with no cloths on because it would prevent the spread of viruses, they would refuse, because it would be very embarrassing and thus dehumanizing, and it would be very hard to convince them that their nakedness was somehow protecting their health.

The media has generated a very high level of fear in the general population of catching COVID. People are afraid of COVID so they wear a mask, it is something to do that might help. Another reason people wear masks is because of peer pressure, if everybody is doing it, I guess I will do it too.

I carry a mask with me and I wear it when I am asked to rather than create a scene, but I don’t like it, not because I am being forced to, but because when I wear the dumb thing I feel like a dog that just got neutered.