Good News Tucson - A Family Values Publication

If Not For Dad & Chicago - Where Would I Be Today?

"Did you know the Bible talks about smoking?" my husband asked our friends when we were out to dinner together recently. "Really," George asked. "Yep," Ned said. "'It says Rebekah lit off her camel.'"

Corny, but good for a couple of chuckles. When I was a little girl and I had a few nickels and dimes to spend, I would cross the street to the tiny neighborhood grocery store and buy myself a pack of candy cigarettes. I'd pull one out, take a long pretend drag, and pretend I was an adult. My Mom would laugh but encourage me to never smoke. "But you do, Mom," I would reply. "But I smoke only one or two cigarettes once in awhile in the evening," she would reply, "and I only smoke outside, and my cigarettes are filtered so I don't inhale much tobacco." Sure, Mom.

But my Mom was so protective of me. Because of good old-fashioned guilt, I didn't dare try to smoke until I was almost 20. (Really daring, wasn't I?!) My girlfriend Tanya and I were spending the summer with my Dad in Chicago. He encouraged me to bring a girlfriend so I wouldn't be lonely. Tanya and I both found summer jobs and Chicago was the most exciting place in the world to be for two young women from Tucson.

We were young and adventurous and with youth often comes foolishness. Who is kidding who? It happens to us throughout our lives! Anyway, I cornered my Dad one Saturday morning and told him Tanya and I wanted to light up. I figured he would be more understanding since he smoked cigars and I loved the smell of them. Being from the South he was very polite. He stopped, looked at both of us quizzically, then smiled and suggested we walk to the corner market and pick up a couple of cigars and bring them back and smoke them. He conveniently told us he had to go into the office for awhile to finish up some work.

Excitedly, we ran downstairs to the corner newspaper store, bought two cheap cigars and ran back upstairs to the apartment ready to light up. We were so ready. We inhaled them. He never told us to only puff. The result was we turned green, threw up and I never wanted to smoke after that day. Later, Dad told me he had hoped it wouldn't backfire and we would enjoy them!

A lady called into a local Christian radio station and asked the pastor on the air:
" Do you believe people who smoke can go to heaven," she asked. "Of course," he replied. "Only a lot sooner."

In Mark 7:18 Jesus tells His disciples: "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean?' For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach and out of his body." He went on to explain that what comes out of a man is what makes him unclean, evil that is in his heart.

I don't smoke because I want to live all the days God intended me to live and I don't want to smell someone else's smoke and suffer the same consequences. But I better look at my own heart before I start making value judgments about someone else.

And the last time I saw a camel, you couldn't pay me to get up on it, let alone smoke it!

I love ya... laugh and enjoy life.

Kathy

Kathy Thomas is the director of Woman to Woman Ministries of Tucson, dedicated to the encouragement and healing of women, which airs a weekly radio program on KGMS 940 AM every Sat. at 2 pm. and on cable television Wed. at 3 p.m. on channels 72 and 97 and Fri.at 5 p.m. on channels 73 and 98. email Kathy at hooperandhonker@msn.com.