It is early in the morning as I begin this Lord's Day post. Here in Western Pennsylvania is it 37 degrees and sunny. The birds are taking turns at their feeder....the robins having had a good day yesterday with the rain. There are sticks and a few larger branches strewn across the yard from the high winds of yesterday....my American flag and holder ripped from the wood from those high winds. The forsythia bushes are in bloom but the maple trees have not started to bud yet.
The visits to these web pages always slack off on Saturdays....and are even less on these the Lord's Days. Weekends tend to take our attention away from the concerns in the world....and even from God. Our next three hours.....evangelicals I'm referring to here....will give to preparation and travel to and from church. We will laugh and chatter at the entrance of the church....and even in the pews....sing a few hymns....listen to a sermon that tells us how much God loves us....then laugh and chatter our way to the car. The men will settle in later to the NCAA basketball games.....and the women will prepare for the events of the coming week.
All this as the Babylonians are returning....or the barbarians....or the Vandals....marching quickly from the north or the east. There isn't much left to sack. Jeremiah is in a pit somewhere....and Daniel has already been hauled off to Babylon.
What it boils down to is that the church today....much of it....utterly refuses to pay attention to what God designed as a day that was for us only in that it is the day that we are to take joy in that God is to be given the glory due only to Him. We benefit....we are to be blessed....we are to be protected....by putting aside the things of this world....and giving Him that glory....and rejoicing in that glory!
We found a way out of all of this. A little tweak here on Scripture....and a little fudging there on history....and lo and behold....we have our Sunday....and thus we have our America. Oh there is still a remnant....there is always a remnant. I did read the words of a woman in an EF-4 tornado devastated Mississippi town....(along with other heart-breaking articles)...."I don't care if I don't have shoes or a hat, I'm going to go to church in the morning." Another lady shielded her grandchildren in a hallway and prayed...."Lord....please take care of us."
I'll bring back this anecdote from a post of years ago....we were on a cruise to Bermuda. I was passing time in our room waiting for my wife to get ready to go to dinner....and turned on the ship's limited television. The 1953 film Titanic with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb came on. I found it odd....on a cruise....that this film was being broadcast....but after about ten minutes the screen went blank....and another film replaced it....a comedy I believe. The ship administrators may have believed that people on a cruise would not want to think about any emergencies. If this were the case....they were right.
We went to dinner and sat with three other couples....and two ladies from London....and as everyone was talking about the upcoming port-o-call....I attempted to start some serious conversation on the condition of the world today....(this was eight or ten years ago.) I mentioned....particularly because of the two English ladies....the highest grossing film of war-torn 1942....and Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Best Actress and Best Director and Best Supporting Actress....Mrs. Miniver. The film revolved around a well-to-do English family with a cottage on the Themes. It began with a church service....this before the war reached England....and everyone present was interested in anything but worshiping God. At the end of the film....with a hole in the roof of the church from the bombs....and some of the main characters killed in the war....there was another church service.....only now....after the devastation of the war....the people were concentrating on their God. There was a pause at the dinner table....and then one of the English ladies started talking about what excursion she was going to go on in Bermuda.
May God awaken us in these storms....both atmospheric and societal....that are increasingly shaking our pedestrian lives.
