It was 2014....aboard Royal Caribbean's....Grandeur Of The Seas. At our dinner table there was a retired rodeo cowboy and his wife....a professor and his wife....(this is sounding like Gilligan's Island)....two single English ladies from London....a couple that lived not that far from where we live....and my wife and I. We all dined together the whole cruise. One evening I tried to break the steady conversations about trivial matters....port-o-call excursions....that type of thing. Out of no where I brought up the Academy Award Best Picture....Best Actress....Best Director....and a bunch of other 'Bests' winning 1942....Mrs. Miniver....one of my favorite films.
I talked slow for dramatic effect. I told of the church service at the beginning of the film....before the war started....where all the main characters were having a jolly time listening to a jolly sermon....and then I paused and told about the last scene of the film....the church in the small cottage town outside London was partially bombed out....with much of the ceiling gone....exposing the open sky. A number of the main characters of the film had been killed off by the end of the film....but many of the other church goers were still there....and it was anything but a jolly time....with very serious faces....and a very serious minister. Well that was my point to the story....we may be cruising in calm waters but the world was in dangerous straits. How would our new friends react. Well....the one English lady who had been looking at me....I would have thought she would have appreciated the theme....she looked back at everyone else and immediately started talking about an excursion they were planning on in Bermuda! It's not easy being orange!
Let me segue for a moment to last evening....where my wife and I were at a swanky restaurant....swanky in Special Dog's life anyway....with a patio table and live music. My wife was talking most of the evening with her friend about regular daily things in our lives. Towards the end of the dinner....I don't think that I had said anything yet....in the middle of laughter....I looked straight at my wife's friend and out of the blue again....asked her opinion of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. That's just me. I like to talk about things that matter. I'm not the first one people would think about when compiling a dinner party guest list.
So twelve hours from now men will be filling their pulpits or standing behind their transparent or translucent lecterns. Laughter will have filled the sanctuary as the congregation arrives. Mothers will be disciplining children....fathers looking for the pew....children dropping things. Just about everything will be discussed from knee problems to vacations....everything except the Lord Jesus Christ.
The pastor will welcome everyone and comment on what a beautiful day is....the chatter will stop....and the service will begin. The name of Jesus will be heard throughout the sermon but no one will even have had a tinge of discomfort....and certainly nothing even near despair. As soon as the sermon ends the laughter will return with a vengeance....and we wonder why America is collapsing?
We hear a fair amount about mass baptisms at this college or that beach....but I am hoping and praying to hear about Jonathan Edwards type sermons where the people were sliding out of their seats upon hearing...."Their feet shall slide in due time." Edwards preached this sermon....more than once....specifically to wake up the sleeping congregations. And you know what....this was at God's direction....and in His perfect time! May this...even tomorrow....Be God's perfect timing to have mercy upon His shepherds....thereby having mercy upon all of us!
Note: I highlight my Bible with four different colors. Orange represents anything related to prophecy. Consequently there is orange highlighter all through my Bible. Thus my comment....'it's not easy being orange.'
