Every member of our family has had a bug or a virus of some nature over the past month....and I'm sure that many of you have also. We all know what to expect....as when one person gets it....it's only a matter of time. With me...after only a couple of days....it seemed to break overnight. You know what I mean I'm sure....maybe all of a sudden there was no fever....and you can feel a general coolness over your whole body....the feeling of oppression lifts...although a weakness may remain....as it may be that you feel like you were banged up in a car accident?
              So I woke up this morning....and thanked and praised God for another day....and ran through a litany of prayers for the people that I love....and others who I know are in need of God's help and mercy in some way....and eventually I am downstairs booting up this laptop to check the news....and it is the same every day....and has been the same every day for over a decade now....for a different blanket feeling of oppression is always present because of this troublesome man who seems to scour the earth for some way to get richer....some person or country to belittle....some great monument to build for himself.
              That some people claim to love this man....or think that he is great....is irrelevant....for the time will come when the hangover begins....and they look around at the house strewn with empty champagne bottles....and broken glass....overturned furniture....and a lingering smell of carnage.
              To one degree or another...and that degree can vary widely....it is a vexation of God's children....those anyway who like Lot were hurrying away from Sodom....leaving others like Lot's wife to disobey the command not to look back. Lot was given the choice on where he could live....and he chose the lusher valleys....but that oppression....and that vexation....would surely come....just as it has to us today in our own version of Sodom.
              Just as with a bug or a virus....with no resort other than to rest and medicate wait and pray....this oppression will surely lift in due time...in God's perfect timing....and the healing comes to our souls....that will be bathed in repentance....and administered a balm....and a restoration of the hope and a love that we had at first when we saw the love that was poured out on us at Calvary....and in the tomb....and on that hill....and in that upper room!