The Grands Letter

Dear Grands,

Ezekiel 16:4-6, “As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing; you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths.
5 “No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born.
6 “When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!’”

The LORD is speaking to Israel as if she were a child, despised and abandoned by the parents. All that was due to a newly born Israeli child was that 1) the the navel cord be cut, allowing the child to live apart from its mother; 2) that the child be washed of the afterbirth, thus thoroughly cleansed; 3) rubbed with salt as a purifying substance; and 4) wrapped in cloths, so as to be protected from the surrounding elements.

Yet, none of these normalities at birth were performed upon the child. It was abandoned to an open field, despised by its parents from the very day of its birth. Squirming in its own blood, the LORD said “LIVE!” And the child lived!

Matthew Henry comments on this passage, saying, “…it is a very apt illustration of the miserable condition of all the children of men by nature. As for our nativity, in the day that we were born, we were shaped in iniquity and conceived in sin; our understandings (were) darkened, our minds alienated from the life of God, polluted with sin, which rendered us loathsome in the eyes of God. Marvel not then that we are told, ‘You must be born again.’”

I write this on my 86th birthday. My parents were superb Christian people, and it was they who prayed with me the night I repented of my sin and accepted
Jesus Christ as my Savior. Thus, I have been committed to Him for these 79 years, wishing only that those years might have been more completely dedicated to Him. Give Him your life! There’s no life like it anywhere else!

Heartily in Christ Jesus,

(Dado III)

Gene L. Jeffries, Th.D.
Springdale, Arkansas 72764
United States of America

“We never know that Christ is all we need until He becomes all that we have.” – Corrie ten Boom