July 06, 2010
Leave a Message
We’re all accustomed to getting voice mail that says, ‘Sorry I missed you’re call. Leave a message and I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.’ Recently my co-worker called a prospective client and the voice recording said, “I’m looking at making some drastic changes in my life, so if I don’t answer your call…you’re one of them.” Well, all righty… While we may laugh at the sentiment, I doubt that most of us would actually endorse such sarcasm. However, on a Christian level there is a point to be made. When we become a believer we must say to the world and to Satan, ‘I’m making drastic changes in my life so I’ll no longer be taking your calls.’
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----If it would only be that easy. Many situations are. That is why I don’t frequent the bars, chase skirts, or dump ridiculous sums of money into fast cars. But other things don’t cut and dry so easily. Our Amish brethren provide a good example of how difficult principles can be to apply in a complex environment. They guide their lives according to simplicity, so you won’t find electricity in their homes, they won’t drive cars, watch TV, go to the movies, etc. But they will ride around in buggies that are technological advancements beyond simply standing upon two feet and walking. Moreover, the buggies complicate life in ways a vehicle never would. They require maintenance, and they require horses which need to be fed, sheltered, and provided with veterinary care, not to mention the continuous poop scooping of the barns. Their kerosene lanterns are a technological advancement beyond simple candles, but they require the complication of maintaining a fuel and wick supply, which bespeaks of the complicating need to continually fuel and wick these devices, as well as the need to find a match - another convenient piece of technology - every time you wish to have light. I guess if technology were the real issue, they would rub sticks together and blow on grass to light their cave dwellings. But if simplicity is the goal, that is exactly what technology has brought to life. I can do a word search in fifteen minutes using my Bible software that would take me the better part of an evening using a concordance and an ink and paper Bible. And if the work necessary to buy the car, the computer, and the Bible software is the problem, surprisingly, the horses and buggies, kerosene lanterns, and ink and paper Bibles also require a purchasing from the rewards of work. Of course a Bible doesn’t cost much nowadays, but that low cost also is a benefit of technology; think what it would cost if a scribe had to spend nearly a year copying it, in a cave, by the light of a burning stick.
-----But it is not only the Amish who level complaints about technological complexities. We all do to one degree or another. Our lives become very fast paced trying to earn what we need to pay power bills, water and sewer fees, mortgage payments, insurance of every sort imaginable, car payments, repairs, repairs, repairs, clothing, food, toiletries, and on, and on, and on. Whew. And we talk about the need to live a simple life while we simply twitch a finger to turn on a light so we can have a hot shower with no more than the twist of a wrist. How simpler can that get? Yet it is had only by the sweat of many brows.
-----And that is where it gets difficult sorting between sin and necessity. God gave Adam and Eve a self maintaining place. They turned it into a deteriorating place. Now we must put a roof over our own heads or freeze in the rain and snow, walls around our own bodies or become lion and bear poop, and we must put the fork to our own mouths or starve. Yet we hardly give thought to the survival struggles of the poor creature stuck on the end of that fork. And once a day we do the most self-serving thing of shutting out the world around us to sleep so we will have the strength to earn all the other stuff survival requires. For we must continually calculate our own struggles for survival while carefully weighing the survival needs of those around us and how much engagement we shall make in supplying their shortages. Everything is a weighing of deficiency and excess, of yours and mine, of being honored and honoring. In it all, sin comes calling by many sneaky inroads.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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