Dear Youngman:

The following is a quote from "Surviving Hitler:  A Boy in the Nazi Death
Camps".  In it, the Jewish barber, Aaron is speaking to the boy Jack--

"Did you try to survive in a  ghetto?  In the ghetto in my town, they
starved us.  Whole families died.  When I shave new prisoners, I see so
many who will not last here more than a few weeks.  It is not just because
they are weak and will not be able to do the work.  It is also because,
unless they have been in ghettos, they do not know how to live without
their freedom."

People that don't know how to relieve themselves in a bucket, pick and eat
a few weeds, pull off a few ticks, brush their teeth with a twig, sweat
and be incovenienced are like those germ-free animals.  Weak immune
systems.  Dependent on that germ-free environment for their survival.  The
American church finds itself in this lab-made system--but understand that
it is not merely physical, it is intellectual and spiritual as well.  The
physical, intellectual and spiritual rigors of the past are gone.  They
are gone in me, too.  Physical--I am not the same woman as the slave
mother of by-gone days.  Intellectual--I've read books written by slaves
who could write me under the table in scope and depth of
understanding--spiritual.  I am only trying to recover, on some level,
what is missing and what could have been there.

There is strength in suffering and inconvience.  Like taking the long way
to handsew and then be despised because of your garments.  But there is
strength--you can take any piece of material whether it be a tablecloth
that shrunk up from improper washing, or some curtains, or a towel, sheet
or old dress and transform it into something you can wear.  Like eating a
bitter field salad but being able to find dinner no matter where you are. 
Like water collection of the morning dew on wet rags, like the aboriginie
and sucking it out for your drink--you can find potable water wherever you
go.  Like making a shaky lean-to of branches (located away from widowmakers)
that has sat undisturbed in
your backyard for years--you can improvise a shelter backing it to
the wind no matter where you are and make a survival bed that will keep you off
the cold ground and pulmonary troubles.  Like making pine needle tea
because you know that it is good for you--you can get your vitamin C
without oranges and from a source found in the temperate regions of the
earth.

There is strength and understanding in inconvenience and suffering.  Using
an atlas instead of mapquest.com.  Know how to get lost.  Know your
terrain.  Those that are in Judaea let them flee to the mountains--where
are the mountains?  Know your country.  Know your neighbor(s).  Speak
their language.  Know about their land.  This makes for rich, needful
studies.

Geographical concerns are glaringly prominent in the holy scriptures. 
There is nothing "unspiritual" about this discussion.  In fact, everything
is spiritual because God made everything.  Biblical Scholarship brings
this great truth into focus.  God has something to say about everything
and we've let the world obscure this fundamental fact.

Geographical concerns...when we went to Philadelphia to cap off our study
of early U.S. history studies, Hannah took an atlas (not mapquest) and
charted our journey.  This is not as convenient as a few keystrokes, and
giving it to a child is not as convenient as doing it yourself but it is
necessary if they are going to grow up with understanding and some type of
strength.  We made it to our destination.  In other trips, we've traveled
roads less traveled and enriched our journey because we had a map.  There
is knowledge in incovenience.

Geography takes on whole new dimensions under a Biblical Scholarship.  You
start looking for the reason for the continents--their sizes, shapes,
locations, maybe even their inhabitants, flora and fauna.  You marvel at
the inland water systems of each provided by the Almighty Overseer and
Master of this great, vast, marvellous, wonderful world.

The scriptures direct us to look at the plans for the nations.  It says
that God increaseth the nations and straiteneth them again.  To look at the ebbs and flows of
history with its worldwide convulsions and times of peace just like the motions of
the seas.  And as you look, take note of what the people did, what they
ate, the diseases that afflicted them, their physical and mental responses
to those diseases.  And look for the purposes of God.  Keep your eyes open for
the man of those times who left a written record of what he saw.  A true witness.

I've begun making a list of those dis-eases that  I seem to hear or read
about continually.  Whether I am in the Museum of Civil War of Medicine reading
about the rigors of camp life or
reading the current book on the Holocaust, I hear the same things over and over.  
There are commonalities.

David Brainerd was a missionary to the red man in this country before the
War of Independence.  His diary is extant and can be read online.  He died
a young man, and, as I recall, he was engaged to the daughter of Jonathan
Edwards (the man who preached the famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God).  David Brainerd suffered.  He had need.  His journal reveals what he ate and suffered, his thoughts and activities, and that strange holy thing that began to happen as he worked.

Mephibosheth