Lord If It Be Thy Will....To Thy Glory Alone....Wake Up the Pastor McMurphys In Our Pulpits!

                Russian activist Alexei Navalny has a posthumous memoir that was just released titled....Patriot....of which I have only begun. I'm reading it because I want a clearer view of what the average Russian mind has been since the fall of the Soviet Union. The first words in the book are these....Dying really didn't hurt. His day began normally.....preparing for a flight....but he was poisoned on that flight....and fell into a coma. His descriptions of what it felt like to first realize that he was poisoned....and then that he was going to die....are intriguing to say the least....but his in-depth description of the long process of coming out of the coma are what precipitates this post. It is where my mind went to as I sat reflecting on what Navalny was telling the reader.
               I think of this often....by 'often' I mean regularly at least once every few months over the past few years....as I look back at least six decades of my life in an America that is no more. Metaphorically speaking we in America were having a normal day....with Ronald Reagan having been president for eight years....but we were poisoned. Some just fell then and there into a coma....others....myself being one....remember the first feelings of numbness....and confusion....and anger at what was happening. I tried to call out to someone....anyone....but they....as they did with Navalny....just kept saying...."Keep breathing....keep breathing." 
               And then I woke up to see the damages. I'm reminded of one of the most stirring scenes in all of Hollywood cinema....Randle McMurphy had tried his ever-loving best to wake the patients of the asylum up to life itself....the film being One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest....but the authorities would not accept change....and Jack Nicholson's character was lobotomized. It's a scene that can stick with you for life.
               So here we are in the church today....just coming out of a coma....some of us....while others of us are hallucinating wildly as did Navalny....as this great white stallion appeared.....with a rider on it with a sword in his hand....slaying all of our enemies....as we cheer him on! Is this Christ? No....certainly not....but Christ must have sent him! Why doesn't everyone rejoice with us as we try to form words to tell them? 
               The brain fog is clearing up for some....and the words are slowly coming back. They are told that there was no great white stallion with a rider on it. It was all a hallucination from the drugs of greed and power....but they deny it. Where are the doctors....which would be the pastors? Why aren't they telling us what happened to us? Why do they just keep saying.....everything is going to be alright....as they give us another pill?
                It's a stretch....this story....I know that....but we in evangelicalism were once fairly vibrant....but we got caught up in our own euphoria. We were sure that we knew where we were going....but completely forgot where we came from!
                Billy Graham told a very humorous anecdote in a speech while being given an honorary doctorate. It seems that a man went down south on his annual hunting trip....and asked the proprietor of the hunting lodge if he had a dog named Preacher. The owner said "No"....but the man persisted....."But I heard that you had a very good hunting dog named Preacher?" Then the owner remembered..."Oh yeah....we did have a good hunting dog named Preacher....but then someone came down here and called him Doctor....and he ain't been a lick a' good since."
                 We seem to have doctors everywhere....trying to heal us....but no preachers. Tomorrow once again....men will enter their pulpits....as it turns out....they themselves were in a coma also. They will stumble around on what has now become more of a stage....the words long gone....if they were ever there....that contain the healing balm that we need....in far too many churches the blind leading the blind around....just as McMurphy was in fact blind....capable only of giving the men in the mental institution a hope that fades quickly.
                  But thanks be to our great God and King....there are still men out there that were never comatose....having been vigilant as God's Word instructs them....and there are many who have just come out of that coma....and they will preach the glories and the power and mercies but also the judgment and the warnings. Pray with me this day....that tomorrow be the day that God has chosen to awaken multitudes of sleeping pastors! Pray that tomorrow....October 27, 2024....the Lord's Day....be that holy day when God will begin to have mercy upon his church!
                  And if it be not tomorrow....(I've had a hundred 'tomorrows' come and go)...then Lord let it be next week.....or the week after that if needs be! Whether or not God begins his mercies on us at this time.....let our mantra always be....every morning and every evening....Maranatha....Lord Jesus.....come!