Preface: Many years ago....almost 45 years ago....before I started the job that 37 years later I would retire from....I was a loan officer....where I either took applications....or handled the collections. I made $12,000 a year. Once or twice a week I would have to leave early.....and stop at people's houses....or their work even....who I could not contact over the phone. This one trip is seared in my memory. There was a low-income housing complex a few hundreds yards off the main street.....and from a distance the brick structure looked pretty nice....but then on a near zero degree day I had to go into the complex. The long hallways were open to the cold air....and each door had about a 2" space from the floor.....and I could see blankets or throw rugs had been stuffed in that space to keep out the draft. It would not have taken much in the design to at least close in the hallways....and do a proper job of installing the doors. I was raised in apartment buildings similar to these in outward appearance....only it wasn't low-income....and the hallways and the apartments were comfortable. We all are partly responsible for the urban problems that we have....if for no other reason than sticking our heads in the sand....as half the country built 401s....and the other half was happy to get a rental rebate. I do not think that God takes pleasure in all the ubiquitous phrases that we conservatives spout all the time about liberty and freedom....and freedom of worship....as if we are somehow persecuted....in fact we had to manufacture a fake persecution in the vaccinations.....and as odds are that yesterday....on the Lord's Day....tens of millions of evangelicals sat by their TVs all day watching football....showing more passion for the outcome of a football game....then they ever do on the Lord's Day for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
It was a week that should be remembered....the last week of August 2011....as a 5.8 earthquake violently shook our nation's capitol....damaging the Washington Monument.....and the Washington National Cathedral....our nation's supposed House of Prayer. I posted these words a few years later in 2018:
Three of the four grand pinnacles of the cathedral...each weighing 50 tons....collapsed. Gargoyles were damaged with one decapitated by falling debris. Today....seven years later....they are only half way finished with the repairs. That earthquake was a message to us from God.
Just as those gargoyles were shaking....a hurricane formed in the Caribbean....that would in the next few days bounce a couple of times off our east coast....from the Outer Banks....To New Jersey....To Brooklyn....and even into Vermont....and this as the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Monument in our capitol had to be postponed.
I posted this also in 2018....concerning those memorials of which we have visited often over the years....along with my father's grave across the river in Arlington National Cemetery...."I love America and that sentiment is written throughout these posts....but I love it as the gift that has been given to Americans and to the world. It is the Gift-Giver [alone] that deserves our adoration! God will either save America for His purposes or He will let us fall in our own delusion. He will not be mocked....nor will He meet us halfway....nor can we convince Him to see it our way. We will either prostrate ourselves before Him or He will prostrate us before our enemies."
The enormity of the April of 1912 news coverage over the sinking of the....'unsinkable'....Titanic seemed as an omen to Great Britain....and America actually as the ship was British operated but American owned.....as World War I....the Depression....and World War II followed in short order. I have likewise thought that those images of the Challenger exploding in 1986 were a warning to us in America....and as I once wrote in these posts...."Laugh this off or shrug it off if you wish but you might want to direct the laughter at me....and not God....for He will not be mocked."
One last thought from the past....on those whose accomplishments have been memorialized in stone...."Martin Luther King's legacy is one of peace and reconciliation. His death was as destructive to this nation as John Kennedy's, or Robert's. His sacrifice and efforts (positively and profoundly) effected the relationships of our races. We were a better people because of his life"....but MLK and others...."were men and women of great accomplishments....but [also] fallible, sinful, rebellious men and women....(as we all are)....who were in need of a Savior....who have since stood before the Creator of everything that exists....many of whom would gladly trade a granite memorial....(or a day in their name....or a building or a bridge or an aircraft carrier....or their face carved in the side of a mountain)....for a robe of Christ's righteousness to cover their unrighteousness."
