Post Tenebras Lux

Roughly twelve hours from my beginning this particular blog pastors will be taking the pulpits of America, at least in the Eastern time zone, and continuing each hour for the few hours after that as the earth turns to greet the new Lord's Day. America's decline is rapidly speeding up and we were given a glimpse of that in the aftermath of the superstorm that wreaked havoc on the east coast. We have an election for president coming up that could be described as theater of the absurd. I'm sitting in front of a fireplace and just as I ended that last sentence the small flickering flame died out as is what will happen to the small flame of liberty and Christianity in America if we continue as we are, seeking our own will over God's, our own glory over His.  Our only hope is in those pulpits and there are no signs, to my knowledge anyway, that they are being infused with life. God is longsuffering but we have taken him to the limit on this. My hope for some time has been that I would begin to hear stories about church services where a deathly pall fell over the congregation, where the stillness of despair overwhelmed the festivities of the day, where the pastor's ever-present smile was now a frown as if he was preaching from a bombed out sanctuary. Eighteenth century pastor and theologian Jonathon Edwards preached more on love than he did on hell but his sermon Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God had just such effects on his congregation at the time. God has been warning us for quite some time now. I watched more football today than in the last twenty years combined as I was lured by the Pitt/Notre Dame game, a game which I lived for way back then. After about an hour I was shaken by the memory of the power that sport once held over me. The coward in me pleads with God to awaken us before judgement comes. There are no signs of life but signs all around of judgment. Many others see this. I'm not the only one. Maybe Monday morning I'll hear a story about someone's strange church service filled with dread. Maybe God will have mercy upon us once again. There was a Latin phrase widely used at the time of the Reformation....post tenebras lux, after darkness...light. Jesus said "I am the light of the world." This is our hope....not political elections.