April 06, 2010
The Days of Lot
After leaving the house for worship services Easter morning, I got whiplash when I drove past a neighbor’s hastily thrown up yard sale sign. Who has a yard sale on Easter Sunday? Taking that though a step further, who goes yard sailing on Easter? Then down the street a liquor store was open at 9:00 am…and customers were entering the store. Jesus told the Pharisees that the coming of the Kingdom of God would be no different than in the days of Lot. “People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:28-29 NIV) Believers know that the Son of Man could be revealed at any time…maybe even on an Easter Sunday!
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Gail;
-----In my early twenties I realized I was going insane. I was seriously manic-depressive. I had read the Bible from cover to cover before I finished High School. I wanted to know where it came from and how to understand what it said, so I had spent a few years in Bible College. I loved its wisdom and I loved its message and I was learning its truth, but I lived like myself. I had ghosts in my closet, spite in my heart, and disobedience in my mind. I knew what I should be but was not, and I always had someone else to blame. I lived like a hermit so few could see the real shame of what I was. And in my loneliness each thought and feeling twisted easily to fit into an emerging pattern of doubt, fear, and guilt.
-----So when I finally rolled out of my disgraceful bed to halt my progression towards insanity, I knew the key to recovery was in combing my twisted thoughts and feelings with the truth and making it real in my actions. But I also knew my mind stored the effects of many years of careless and deceitful living. I knew my thoughts would take several years of combing with Word before I could completely break free of my manic-depressive patterns and assume a steady ascent into joy. I knew it would be a project of reconnecting many different moods, habits, attitudes, and beliefs with each other by the truth of the Word.
-----As I began to practice my plan for recovery, I realized how similar a society functioned like the inner workings of the mind and emotions. People form groups of shared philosophies and interests just like habits form in the mind. The interactions of a group’s individuals keeps its identity and characteristics girded and practiced just like individual thoughts and feelings do for a habit. And society has diametrically opposed groups, just like the mind has diametrically opposed habits. The less there is interaction between the thoughts and feelings of opposing habits, the more polarization will separate them. Eventually patterns of manic-depression and dual personalities emerge. The less there is interaction between individuals of opposing groups, the more polarization separates them. Eventually patterns of hope and despair emerge in society like ripples, then grow like waves, and crash like breakers.
-----As a group of this society, we could admit no harm no foul about the yard sale on Easter. We could understand someone might like a beer that day. Maybe even somebody ran out of wine for their Easter dinner. But we also know that the truth must hold some principles as hallowed fibers for binding groups together. Holding tightly to truth, we grieve in our hearts as these fibers are broken. We watch people coalesce into groups of opposing principles and sink our society into insanity. All we can do is remember that love of God and neighbor is the last fiber of hope for any society. We must go face to face and heart to heart with each individual who comes beside us and deliver whatever piece of truth any window of opportunity might afford. But we must remember that although society itself might settle to the bottom of insanity, the Lord yet maintains a cleft in the Rock for those who recognize the truth and talk with one another (Mal 3:16).
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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