Letters

Appreciate you

    Dear folks of Bedford, the response to my request for your help to fill our shelves of many needed items at Christian Ministries was over the top with your generosity. It was heartwarming to see your response.

    Please continue to think of us whenever your excesses have to find a new home. We are located on Washington Street across from the Farmer’s Market and receive items on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday – 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. A huge, genuine thank you to “The Dear Hearts and Gentle People Who Live and Love in Our Home Town.”

Barbara Scott

Bedford

Superb

performance

    Over the past 35 years I have attended a high school and two Broadway productions, plus the movie version of “Fiddler On The Roof.” This past Friday evening my wife, Beverly and I, along with several friends, had the pleasure of witnessing as good a performance of “this grand story of community, love, and papa-hood,” to quote Mr. Epstein, as any I have seen.

    Not only did Mr. Epstein direct a superb performance I can only regret not being able to do justice to the great work done by the entire cast and staff. It is hard to believe they could have accomplished such an excellent presentation with less than months of work and rehearsals.

    If Mr. Forman who played Tevya and Ms. Butler who played Golde aren’t professionals they certainly must have played these roles before. May the rest of the cast forgive me for not citing them individually as the all certainly deserve great praise. It took no more than a few seconds from the first stroke of D. J. Marsh’s bow across his “fiddle” for me to be fully into the story, marveling at every moment of verse and/or dialogue by every “character.”

    Finally, whoever performed the bottle dance (the program didn’t identify him) nailed it. Once more, wow.

 

Bob Terry

Bedford

A great leader

    I was very impressed while I watched a great leader address the U.N. 

    Aside from being articulate, he was passionate as he stood for freedom.  This leader showed true courage in the face of almost certain criticism from many world leaders as he defended his country from despots who have in the recent past sought to demean and diminish the great nation for which he stood.  In short, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel showed himself to be a true leader.

    Oh yeah, the president of the United States also spoke and was well received by people like Muammar Gaddafi and Hugo Chavez.  I guess that counts for something.

Mark Laperle

Bedford

Another email

    Today I got another email from David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to the President.  Perhaps you did too.

    In the email I was asked to watch a 4 minute video that would tell me what “every American needs to know” about the President’s proposed reforms on America’s health care insurance.  I did.

    The video was a collection of excerpts from his recent address to the joint sessions.   Frankly, it had a lot of appeal.  The president looked young and confident.  What he said sounded pretty good too.  He told me all the things his plan would do for me and every American.  No losers.  Everyone would win!  And better yet, he was going to do all this at no increased cost or taxation.  In fact, he was going to save us money while guaranteeing us freedom of choice in our coverage and ensure that no one went without, regardless.

    But as I listened to the promises, a growing awareness of reality settled in.  There are basic laws in life that are constant in spite of what people may think.  Let’s consider just a couple:

    1. Freedom and privilege are not free.  Someone always has to pay.  So, who?  And how?  How much?

    2.  Everyone won’t win.  So who’s going to lose?

    As I continued to reflect I understood that with political promise, rarely do the “feel good moments” for the listener become reality.

    The promises urgently made and already failed by this president, (to name just one: the necessity and benefits of the financial bailouts and today’s reality) bring me to conclude that I must not fall for promises but figure out principles.  They will determine our realities.

    Does America need change in health care insurance?  Yes.  But let’s be realistic and find a plan that delivers more than promises which can’t be kept.

Melvin Adams

Hardy

President of RENEWANATION

The

disappearance of common sense

    Every day common sense disappears as we lay to rest the folks that grew up hard during the great depression and survived WWII. Unlike today’s brainwashed generation they learned how to survive in the school of hard knocks.

    While Al Gore is getting rich off the global warming hoax, the one sided liberal media has done a great job of convincing  people that the planet is going to die from burning fossil fuel. It is ignorant to believe that man’s use of fossil fuels for energy is causing climate change when one major volcanic eruption spews more pollution into the sky than man could ever create. Have you forgotten the history lesson about the summer of 1816 that never came to the northern hemisphere after Mt. Tambora erupted in Indonesia? That summer a June snowstorm and freeze wiped out the potato crop in Maine while hunger and disease were widespread in Northern Europe due to shortage of food caused an unusually cold summer.

    The extra carbon dioxide is being blamed making allergies worse due to an increase in pollen. Common sense tells me that more pollen means that the plants are producing more food and fiber. Thanks to modern technology and the extra carbon dioxide absorbed by the plants the American farmers were over producing food until the government decided to convert food into fuel. The sudden demand of corn for ethanol and soybeans for bio-diesel caused the price of feed grains to triple which caused fertilizer prices to quadruple. Did you know that we have to import the fertilizer to grow the extra corn and soybeans to produce fuel? We, the taxpayers, have subsidized this government induced folly 51 cents for every gallon of ethanol produced. Converting food into fuel was the main reason for the sudden surge in food prices so we paid for the ethanol hoax twice.

    Common sense tells us that we can’t economically eliminate coal to produce electricity. How do you eliminate a billion tons of coal used to produce our annual consumption of electricity? Using wind, solar or turkey manure to create electricity is a joke. Burning dung for fuel instead of using it to grow food is something I thought could only happen in a third world nation. Why burn turkey manure worth $75 per ton as a fertilizer when we spend $60 per ton to bury garbage that would generate electricity? Fear and the lack of common sense has put us way behind the rest of the world in nuclear generated electricity. What ever happened to the philosophy of the businessmen who grew up during the depression? “If an idea won’t pay, scrap it.” I can buy a 400 KW Diesel generator for $50,000 while a local businessman installs a solar generator for $25,000 that produces only 4 kilowatts of electricity when the sun is shinning. You do the math.

    The speculators and unnecessary riding in the oversized off road pickups and SUVs set the price of fuel, not big oil. Common sense should have told these folks that there is no such thing as a free ride. The main reason for the current economic disaster is that the “Baby Boomers” and their offspring have used easy credit to keep up with the Joneses. We look prosperous with all the big houses, banks, insurance buildings, fancy schools, hospitals, government facilities, and gas guzzling transportation of which very few are paid for. Since our banks have run out of money we’re turning to China to finance this over-indulgence. Before the streets of Manhattan are flooded from the melting of the polar caps, the Chinese will own America. When you cross the tracks into the manufacturing and wealth creating side of any city, all you see is rust, rot, and decay. Have you ridden through this part of Bedford City lately? Our politicians and multi-national corporations through NAFTA have moved the productive side of town overseas.

    The voters traded capitalism for socialism in last fall’s election. Common sense should tell us that socialism won’t work. Even after the recent price increases for the free enterprise, AEP, electricity in the county, my socialist, Southside, current bill is still 50 percent higher than my neighbors. Suppose we had to depend on the post office, VDOT, the public school system, or the local sheriff’s department to supply our food. We would all starve, or be bankrupt in a few months. Have the voters forgotten the long lines waiting for food under socialism in the Soviet Union? When the history books are written about the down fall of America, the real reason will be the loss of COMMON SENSE.

Richard H. Ruff

Goode

Recession or revival?

    Friends, our nation is at a crossroads right now.

    We are in the worst recession since the Great Depression. In the Bible Israel would either have turmoil or revival. God said if they did certain things, He would bless their nation. But, if they didn’t follow Him there would be severe consequences for the nation. This was true for Israel and it is true for any nation today. God gives us this promise-“If you return to the Lord your God, and you and your children begin wholeheartedly to obey all the commands I have given you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes” Deuteronomy 30:2-3. Let’s look at three steps to personal and national revival.

    1. We Must Reconnect With God – “The Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says, ‘Only in returning to me and waiting on me will you be saved’” Isaiah 30:15. Somehow America got disconnected from God and we have been drifting further and further from God for some time. Now all the bills are coming due. How do we reconnect with God?

    We have to recognize that God is God and we are not. We have thought we are God, that we are the one in charge. Reconnecting means that we are going to look to God for answers & guidance.

    God wants us to have a connection with Him. No matter what we have done, God wants us back. “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity” Joel 2:13. Like in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we need to realize that we have drifted away from God and it is time to come back to our Heavenly Father.

    2.  We Must Pray For Our Leaders – “I urge first of all that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in godliness and holiness. This is good, and it pleases God our Savior” 1 Timothy 2:1-3.

    Why should we pray for our leaders?

    The Bible says that we are to pray for “kings and all those in authority.”- It does not matter what our politics are, we are to pray for our President and government leaders “that we may live peaceful and quiet lives.” – When we pray for God to give wisdom to our leaders, then God can give them the wisdom to lead our country towards peace & prosperity, and we can benefit by living peaceful and quiet lives.

    “This is good, and it pleases God our Savior.” It pleases God when we pray for our leaders.

    3.  We Must Repent of Self-Centeredness – We must repent of this because self-centeredness is the root of every single problem in our lives and in our nation. The heart of all our problems is a problem in our hearts. Sin starts here. God did not cause this recession- we did. Because we forgot God and we started going our own way and we ignored all the principles in the Bible about materialism, selfishness & greed. For the past year economists have been trying to explain how our economy collapsed. But the root problem of our recession is a spiritual problem in the hearts of Americans. It’s greed. It’s impatience- buying things we don’t need with money that we don’t have. The inability to delay gratification- “I’ve got to have it now!” It’s spending more than we make. For years now Americans have been overextending in money & energy. As a result, it has all come crashing down. So the answer starts here with our hearts and applying what God says about managing money and saving money, and not being greedy & materialistic, and placing our trust in God & not in ourselves. What we need to do is to confess our sin and repent of our self-centeredness and follow God.

    Our nation has gone through tough times before: Civil War, Great Depression, World War II, 9/11- and God saw us through. Now is the time for us to pull together, to repent and turn to God, and one day we will be able to see how God saw us through this.

Eldridge Cullum- pastor

Thaxton Baptist Church