"For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light."

Sometimes the thoughts and words of others 'pretty well say it all' - all that really needs saying, anyhow. Seeing as this gives every indication of being one of those times...

*Ever since his fall, Satan has worked by means of deception. As he has misrepresented God, so, through his agents, he misrepresents the children of God...

There was never one who walked among men more cruelly slandered than the Son of [M}an. He was derided and mocked because of His unswerving obedience to the principles of God's holy law. They hated Him without a cause...

While slander may blacken the reputation, it cannot stain the character. That is in God's keeping. So long as we do not consent to sin, there is no power, whether human or satanic, that can bring a stain upon the character.

A man whose heart is stayed upon God is just the same in the hour of his most afflicting trials and most discouraging surroundings as when he was in prosperity, when the light and favo[u]r of God seemed to be upon him.

His words, his motives, his actions, may be misrepresented and falsified, but he does not mind it, because he has greater interests at stake. Like Moses, he endures as 'seeing Him who is invisible... looking not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.' 

Christ is acquainted with all that is misunderstood and misrepresented by men. His children can afford to wait in calm patience and trust, no matter how much maligned and despised...

For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest...

...and those who honour God shall be honoured in the presence of men and angels.

And so the great Apostle Paul also admonished:

Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, [W]ho will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts...
...and then each one's praise will come from God...-or otherwise!

**As the wise[st] man [who ever lived...or ever will - aside from Jesus Christ Himself] once put it, folks, there is indeed 'nothing new under the sun'. No, indeed!


*/**Due - and grateful -  acknowledgment to Ellen G White's classic tome, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing (otherwise known as The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached); and to King Solomon's classic Older Testament book of Ecclesiastes.

"You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat it Too!"

So - oh so memorably - once said one who could have become my stepdad, the beloved and wonderful Richard Welch. Brought up in wartime, bombed-out London, he was like a father to me and my younger sister after our Dad walked out on our Mum (some 44-45-odd years ago now). And to describe myself as deeply grief-stricken scarcely does justice to my reaction when, while on a three-year sojourn to my parents' own United States of America, I received, in Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota, the shocking news of his untimely death in 1994 at the relatively youthful age of 67 or 68 (apparently while campervanning on our picturesque South Island West Coast, not long after an energetic campaign to help promote the then prospective option of a new MMP voting system in a nationwide referendum).

But I needs keep this succinct for now: it's simply to commemorate - in northern hemispheric time, corresponding to Richard's birthplace - his 'birth-anniversary', as he always liked to style it, 92 years ago (on September the 24th); he, like my Dad, shared the same birth year as the Queen. Sadly I've even now - mere hours ago - missed the corresponding NH time/day of the 24th, but so be it...

Richard also came into mind yesterday after I heard word of some new survey/study revealing that women - including moreover staunch as feminists - actually prefer fellas (i.e. as prospective romantic partners) who, though sometimes perhaps misconceived as somewhat patronizing in their treatment of (what some referred to once as) 'the fairer sex', nevertheless still maintain(ed) the old-fashioned courtesies once classed as chivalry; (arguably still implicitly respected by most people).

Though I fain see myself as among this number (and I believe I've good grounds for so doing), rarely would one encounter one as purely chivalrous - in all the purest and noblest and even childlike senses of the term - as Richard Welch...

...a rare specimen of humanity indeed, whose 'kind' sadly is distinctly on the wane, even arguably rapidly on the road to extinction. But thankfully not where it really matters.