<TITLE>05. Par 17-19</TITLE>L-17 My, it was cold, and I can just see him shiver as he moved out into the sunlight. And he is... Been a bad day, they had...Nobody had give him anything. Lot of beggars around Palestine at the time. And there was people with leprosy, and--and afflicted, and sick people, and--and laying in the streets: blind, lame, halt, withered. And people would give them coins as they passed: the only meager fare they had to live by. I can see him as he had something on his heart. There'd been no coin give him that day. And he moves out from the shadow of the building, just a little bit, out into the sunshine, and there he settles himself down. He feels along and he settled himself down in the sunlight.
As he set there, he remembered how conditions had been with him and how it was at the time. He's thinking of Rachel, at home, his wife, thinking of little Leah, his little daughter, and how that--what was going to happen to them that night if daddy wound his way home. "Would you help me a little, kind sir?"
"Yes, Bartimaeus, I'll help you to the next corner."
"Would someone help me to the next corner? Does anyone know me in the crowd? Would you help me to the next corner? I'm trying to find my way home." And he thought, when he got home and his little girl brushed his bearded cheeks, kissed him, raked his hair... And he felt the little bony hands of his wife as she patted him and hugged him and kissed him, and wonder if there'd been anything give him that day for some food for the night. Isn't that pitiful? No money, just a beggar.

L-18 He began to think, setting in the warm sun. He'd gathered up his ragged coat around him, which he could not afford a new one. He was a provider for his family; he--he thought of his family first before himself. Any real true dad will do that and husband.
Any Christian will think of others before himself. Every Christian tries to put God first, his family second; he's number three. I've tried to make that a practice in my own life.

L-19 And I see him setting there, "It's a good time," he says, "to kinda..." No stirring up and down the streets, everything's been quiet for a long time. "I don't know where everybody's at today, but seemingly, there no one here."
And as he snuggs down there in the warm sunshine, he begins to kindy think things over. Do you like to get alone and think things over? I do. Just get away... Sometimes I drive my car out, way out in the country; get back in the woods, and turn the key off, and just go out and set down on a log somewhere, just think things over: get alone.
And as he was setting there, thinking, he said, "Yes, you know, a few weeks ago I had a--two little turtle doves that done enchantments and--and turned over, little tumbles over each other. But you know, since my little girl got sick and I went and asked God if He'd heal her I'd--I'd do something special for Him, I'd give Him these little turtledoves. And she got well, so I gave Him the turtledove. And then when my dear, sweet, loving wife was so ill that night, that the doctor said she couldn't live... And I wound my way out around my little adobe house and I knelt down there by the corner... And--and as the warm Palestinian breeze was coming down across the fields, the deserts, I promised Jehovah, if He'd let her get well, I only had one thing left and that was a--a lamb.


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