Seasons

Hello friends, it's a crisp Saturday morning in Falls, and I'm walking alongside the Puda River in Northern Colorado, but a glorious day. The sun is up, a few sparse clouds trailing over the horizon, and it just feels good. I have to admit to being alive. I love fall. I love this season because it's the seasons that make some of life at least interesting, and it's there that I find real joy falls my favorite in some ways, because things are still alive, although the leaves are turning, and the nights are getting cooler. We had a couple down in the thirties this past week here, but I like it because of football. And that's probably why Ruth doesn't like it, but I like the football season. School has started. There's a freshness about the fall. That's interesting because we usually talk about the freshness being about the spring. But for me, there's a freshness in the fall because the season is so obvious in its change and colors abound. Well, I'm going to walk over here and sit down on a bench overlooking the river and do an intro to this podcast about seasons. There's this wonderful passage in a book that at first blush might seem to be a bit of a downer. It's the Old Testament Hebrew writing with clasiasis. But in chapter three, there's this section that says, a time for everything. There's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. Time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down, and a time to build, a time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. Time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent, and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to heat, a time for war, and a time for peace. The writer goes on to say, what do workers gain from their toil? I've seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He's made everything beautiful in its time. We'll come back to that. He has also said eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. This text is saying, every event or thing under heaven has an appointed time. That means every little thing matters. It's all part of a grand design, and things may appear vapors or to our limited perspective, but they're in perfect order from His. When it's hard to make sense out of stuff, if we find God's presence in life, and many of you know this, that's when real meaning and satisfaction will emerge. Solomon affirms the seasons of joys and the seasons of hardships, the high and the low seasons, the valleys of despair, and the peaks when things are going great. This is the ebb of flow of life. There aren't too many things that are great about getting old, but one of them is you have some perspectives on the ebb and flow of life. And if we will keep God at the center, this is my thesis, purpose can emerge, and refining a distilling, a percolating, if I can use that word, in our hearts will take place. So the key question, one of the key phrases here is, so how does God make everything beautiful in its time? If you pick up on the thought of redemption, that God's a Redeemer, to redeem something means to offset its negative traits, and the redemption that we find in Scripture, I'm going to start walking here again, the redemption that we find in Scripture teaches us that God will redeem us from despair and work all things out together. We could spend a lifetime sort of cogitating on that thought. We may not always know how God makes things beautiful or when, but I believe we can count on it, pray that it will happen, keep trusting Him, to redeem even the awkward circumstances, for the pieces that make us different from other people or any of those kinds of things. Well, that's my intro, but I'd really like to do, and what I'm really excited about is to intro my guests. About a year and a half ago, I sat down with two dear friends in Annapolis, Maryland. It's about Annapolis, Maryland is about 45 minutes east toward the Atlantic Ocean of Washington, D.C., and Jim and D.D. Rivers have lived there for a long time. They are two of the most thoughtful, kindest people that I've ever known. They have a way of reflecting on what's important that I think you'll find stimulating, hopefully encouraging. I just teed up for us to talk. Here they are, Jim and D.D. Rivers in Annapolis, Maryland. I've known Jim and D.D. now for about 25 years since we first came to Washington, D.C. And just give us a little background in Jim, wherever you brought up. Camilla Georgia. Where in the world is Camilla Georgia? Camilla Georgia is in the southwest portion of the state. Okay, about 30 miles from the Florida line. Are you a country boy? Yes indeed. And D.D. where were you brought up? I was brought up in Delaware, in Louis, Delaware every summer, and in Seiford during the rest of the year. What is Seiford? Seiford was a nylon plant. That's where my father was. Because your dad worked at DePont and then later on, they moved him down to Savannah River. The Savannah River project. We lived in North Augusta, South Carolina, just across the river from Augusta, Georgia. Jim, you went to North Georgia College. College? In undergraduate? Yes. Were you a good student? I tried to be. See, that's the story of my life right there. I tried to be, I got five units of D in chemistry, one A at Calvary. I didn't try hard enough clearly, but you did better. And you went where to college? I went to nursing school at Duke. At Duke. And then you guys met when you went to the medical college? I was a freshman at the Medical College of Georgia. University of Georgia. And you were a nurse? And I was a nurse at the Medical College of Georgia. And so that's the rest of the story. When they was all it took? You met and married? We met at the end of March. Right. And we married in August. Holy moly, that's good. That's good movement there. I couldn't take a chance of letting her own beliefs. No, you would have gotten it like that. So you ended up then being in the military as a military doctor and being posted to Walter Reed into Fort Ord in California. And you were still nursing all this time, did he? No, when we left Georgia, I didn't work as a nurse. I got involved with children in the inner city. And now we're in this town of Annapolis, which has a fabled history in a lot of ways. And a number of my friends describe you as elders in this city. Why do you think they say that? I mean, apart from being modest, let's just cut to the chase. Why do you think they say that, Jim? Well, because I was a physician and delivered so many babies in this town. So I was well-known. D.D. was a servant to the poor. And the downtrodden in this town. And that's how she spent her time caring for the poor and the dynamite. Between brand new babies, which are new life, and the disenfranchised people on the margins, who often find they don't have much of a life, you've covered the waterfront. Both of you, I can see this, folks can't see this. You're white. Most of the people you've been involved with, D.D., tend not to be white, they tend to be African-American. Give us a snapshot of where that started when you were in D.C., just a little picture. I didn't really know anything about black neighborhoods when I was in D.C., but a lovely woman who had invited me to come and have coffee with her said that after talking with her, I was kind of in the wrong place, and she sent me down to a church in the inner city of Washington to meet this priest, and I was just drawn into that neighborhood and just spent most of my time there. There was all kinds of immigrants, didn't have much money, all of that. And a lot of children whose parents had come up here from the south to work for wealthy white people, and the children had nobody at home. They just were sort of left on their own, and then there were two wonderful young women who had started after school program there, and they invited me to come be a part of it. And I loved it because not only did they help the kids with the schoolwork, but they prayed with the kids, and we fed them breakfast on Friday mornings, and did Bible stories with them, and it was wonderful. How old were you when that happened? I was still in my 20s. You were in your 20s, but when you were 18 as a student nurse, where? At Duke. You one day were on a ward, back in the day when they had wards like you think of World War One with wards. Yes. And what happened? I had been working all afternoon there, and taking temperatures, and all of a sudden, sort of stopped in the middle of the hall, and at that moment I noticed that everybody there was a different color than I was. I was the only white person there. It was all the patients, the nurses, all the visitors on a Sunday afternoon, and I was just standing there thinking about that, and I just felt God was saying to me, I just heard this voice saying, behold your brothers and sisters, and it was something I've treasured for the rest of my life. So the outworking of these next decades came out of a moment in time. One of those moments, that's a life changer. Yes. You hear it, it doesn't always bear fruit right at the moment, but that's what happened. And that's what happened. You are somebody who has worked with people, oftentimes who don't feel like they have a life, or at least not one that's productive. And you, Jim, have been responsible for helping the birth process of somewhere between six and 7,000 babies. Yes, and I had a private practice, but also in this community, there were people who never went to a private practice. And so I took care of a lot of people that had no money, and they just came to the hospital, no prenatal care, whatever, and it was my job, but a privilege to care for them, as well as the patients of the private practice. So a few years back, almost 20 years ago now, sort of on the spur of the moment at a breakfast gathering in DC, I said, Jim, I'm going to go to India here, would you go with me? You went with me, right? Yes, indeed. So you had to cancel all those people that had babies on their own for a couple of weeks. I had partners who had to step in, and pay the price when I got back. But we went together, and one of the things we did, we met with some members of parliament, some other things in Delhi, but then we went to a conference with some missionaries where they had asked me to speak, and I just made the announcement that in the afternoon, you'd speak to all the wives, because you're an OBGYN, and you got a bigger crowd than I did talking to women about men of both. I just, I have always found that to be a hoot. Well, I mean, that's the practicality of the gospel right there, isn't it? Yeah, I would say. You have blessed a ton of people with your lives. You have been blessed by a ton of people with your lives, but to understand that here is the Jesus that doesn't see the colors and doesn't see the status in terms of who do I go to help or who do I die for or whatever, and to see that lived out in your lives is a huge encouragement to a ton of people. You are two of my favorite people to be with. One of the last times I was here, I sat on an antique chair and broke it. I don't know how many thousands it cost to repair, but Ruth told me when I came, when I came today, she said, whatever you do, do not sit in an antique chair. So, so I haven't, I haven't broken anything since I've been here for lunch, but we love you. You are loved by a lot of folks, and thanks for just doing this little piece with me. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be with you today. And you know, I, one thing we didn't say, but I do know that people see us as praying people. Yes. They, they just see us, and we just have some new neighbors across the street, and she just said, you know, we didn't know when we moved here that we'd live across the street from people who are just so faithful and loving and caring, and who pray with us. I love that. You're, I mean, and I don't talk about the nomination on this program very much, or at all, actually. But, you know, I come from Pentecostal roots, and you guys are at Piscopal, and you come from method. I was a Baptist, and then a Methodist, and now at Piscopal. Well, you, you emigrated. Are you, are you going up the food chain or down? I'm a, I'm a place. But, but you are a Piscopal. It's who lay hands on people. Yeah, we do. I love that. If I ever am terrible, that's what I want you to do for me. If I'm okay. I'm out now. I'm leaving. God bless you. We love you. Thank you. We want you to be with us for hours. What a fascinating life, Jim and D. D. Rivers, have had lives full of seasons characterized by people, or moments, or incidents, or influences, opportunities, any one of those, or all of them meshed together overlapping can be seasons. And a season can last a moment or a month or sometimes several years. But here is the God who makes everything beautiful in its time. Well, that's it for now. Dicphose with stories from the road. Signing off thanking you for being gracious and listening and even subscribing. And I'll catch you next time actually from the road in a different state than a different place. God bless.