This morning, on the way to the hospital for an abdominal
bandage change, I got a text from a friend from long ago. Her husband died this morning at 2:15
a.m. I do not know the details yet. I have called and left a message. She will call when she catches her breath and
I know that the only thing I can do for her and her two beautiful children is
pray. You always hear about this
happening to OTHER PEOPLE. You don’t
think catastrophe and heartache and loss will come to your door and knock. In 1995, I watched my father fall victim to a
brain aneurysm. Never expected it. This happens to OTHER PEOPLE. He lived,
albeit with two strokes giving him what amounted to an involuntary frontal
lobotomy. November 4, 2006, my dear
uncle was murdered in his own home.
Imagine watching KPTV Fox News and finding out from the anchor that your
uncle had been cut in half below the waste and dumped in a driveway on Highway
26, with his arms and legs wrapped up in a comforter and stuffed in his van that had been abandoned. It doesn’t happen to us. This happens to OTHER PEOPLE. You see people’s children being kidnapped and
killed and dumped into a ditch or shallow grave—you see this on Fox News. That’s OTHER PEOPLE. Never you. I never
would have expected to hear from the doctor that Mike had an hour to live if
she didn’t get him into surgery IMMEDIATELY.
Hey, this doesn’t happen to us!
This happened to a young girl in Georgia in May. She’s the OTHER PEOPLE.
No, I’m sorry to pee on your rainbow, but we are all the OTHER
PEOPLE.
Turning my attention back to the getting to the hospital, we
arrived and as I’m wheeling my husband in the doors of Building C, once again,
I am brought face-to-face with a reminder of how fragile lives are. Our bodies are finite. For some, life is tenuous and bodies are
riddled with broken down parts and diseased organs. When I lay that transparency over the
transparency of people running to and fro (where did I hear that…..oh, the
Bible. Describing how people would be
carrying on their lives in the last days), I marvel at how quickly our
attention can turn from God’s hand to the world’s hand.
This morning, on the heels of what was the most horrific
storm we have ever seen as a country, I have felt this completely overwhelming
desire to be in prayer as much as I can today.
I know God is moving mightily right now.
Our country is not only in massive turmoil, our entire world is in
massive turmoil. We live in the age of
"news as it happens, immediately, right now", so a massive protest in
Spain or Greece appears immediately on our computer and television
screens. The ONLY thing that keeps us
from becoming Greece or Spain TODAY is ONE cataclysmic event that is simmering
on the edge of our lives. Rest assured,
it IS coming. The question is when. It doesn’t only happen to OTHER PEOPLE. This is heading to our shores as well.
This storm was perhaps the FINAL warning. God is trying SO hard to get our
attention. God is infinite, but I don’t
imagine His patience with us is.
We are seeing murders and corruption and disease on a
biblical scale, for lack of a better description. Our children are NOT safe on the streets
anywhere anymore. It is quickly coming
to the point for some children that they are not even safe IN THEIR OWN HOMES,
with danger coming either from the hands of an adult in their lives or someone
breaking into their home and taking them to their death. The other night, I was driving to get I can't
remember what from I can't remember what store, and at the stoplight, two young
girls, about 12 years old each, were out by themselves, in bike and scooter. Way past dark. Growing up, this sight wouldn’t
have been given a second thought. My
first thought? “Where the hell are the
parents and why are these two out this time of night?” My “mom” radar kicked into overdrive and I
was PISSED. Did we not just hear about
the discovery of a 10 year old girl that was dismembered in Colorado? How long does one’s attention span have to be
to forget that news and let two girls about the same age out after dark on the
street? No, that happens to OTHER
PEOPLE. Damn, there’s that phrase again.
This is not our parents’ world anymore. With every headline, you can all but see the
razor sharp finger of Satan stirring the cesspool we live in. If you think the Bible is irrelevant to today’s
world, the Bible just can’t relate to today’s world, and the Bible is a lovely
collection of historical stories but doesn’t really apply, what HAVE you been
smoking? The Bible IS relevant
today. In fact, you can take just about
ANYTHING from a news headline and find it referenced in the Bible. Just open to the books of Daniel, Ezekiel,
Isaiah, any of the major prophets of the Old Testament. Read Matthew, John, any of the letters of the
Apostle Paul, Revelation. It’s all
there. And it’s every bit as relevant
NOW as it was when it was written and compiled into our Bible. And what God has planned in store for us will
not happen to OTHER PEOPLE. It will be
coming to ALL OF US.
A week ago, over two
months before Christmas, I saw that ridiculous dog with the target around its
eye running through a snowy scene with Christmas shoppers, heralding the coming
of the insanity of Christmas, the shop-till-you-drop, the “be at the stores at
3:00 a.m. standing in lines of freezing cold shoppers so you can fight your way
into a store and engage in hand-to-hand combat for a plastic toy your kid will
forget about three days after Christmas” insanity of Christmas. I HATE
the world’s Christmas. To me, it’s like
trying suuuuuuuuper hard to get a really tight sweater on and it’s suffocating
me as it’s stuck on my head and no matter how hard I try to wiggle into it, it
just chokes me. THAT is how this time of
year affects me from the world’s standpoint.
I really find it shameful that
the world uses a celebration of the birth of our Savior to act like they have a
limitless credit card to buy meaningless items for people who sometimes have to
be reminded about the person the gift came from. I have stood in miserable silence in the
checkout lines at a store while women before and after me complain about having
to buy “someone” a gift just so they have something under the tree but I really
don’t like him/her. Wow, I know Jesus
wasn’t born on December 25. More like
late September/early October if you look at the weather in that part of the
world at that time of the year. I KNOW
Mary crouched on a bed of hay and squeezed out our Savior on that bed of hay,
the Savior that would suffer, die, be
buried, and rise on the third day JUST so you can bitch about having to shop
till you drop for someone you don’t care to talk to. THAT is how much I love Christmas.
Thanksgiving, I can deal.
I love to feed my family and I need to get cracking and get Mike up and
healthy again because he literally takes over the kitchen and makes a wonderful
memory out of a meal.
If I were the Almighty, and thank Him I’m not, I cannot
honestly say I’d be in an all fired up hurry to come back to collect the saved
because the mere thought of having to even come close to what we have created
in this world is that—what word can I use?
Unappealing? Unsavory? Disgusting?
But it’s HIS plan and HIS time and my job is to be ready, have my wick
trimmed and oil lamp filled, and TRY to share the gospel with people. I don’t know if I have accomplished that with
this writing. To be honest, that’s not
my aim with this writing.
My aim is to share with you, as best I can, my heart this
morning. We have had a storm hit our
country. Fifty or 60 years ago a very
ugly woman with a very ugly heart made a stink of God being in our
schools. Over the decades we have
systematically chased God out of every aspect of American life, from prayer at
football games, prayer groups in schools, crosses on mountains, crosses on the
side of the road, churches holding gatherings in schools. Myself, personally? I have not done that, but by saying NOTHING,
every single one of us is complicit in shutting Him out. We have chased him out, but who is it we
always seem to run to when disaster strikes our country, or crisis and
heartbreak descend upon our lives?
God. We call out to the One we
ordered to leave. As Ann Graham Lotz is fond of saying, “God is a
gentleman. If he’s asked to leave he isn’t
going to create a fuss.”
Do I feel that this storm was happenstance? Absolutely not. This MONSTER storm hit two days before the
celebration of witchcraft, darkness, and sin, Halloween. Make fun of me for saying that, I don’t
care. If you KNEW some of the occult
aspects of this day you’d run screaming and never turn to look back over your
shoulders. I highly recommend going to www.lasttrumpetministries.org,
and read some of the writings that the founder of that ministry shared about
HIS youthful involvement in the occult as a young man. He came from a family widely renowned in the
world of the occult. He was something of
the Grand Poobah of the occult until he was invited to church and heard the
gospel of Jesus Christ. He RAN from the occult and spent the remainder of his
adult life teaching and warning people about it until he went Home a couple of
years ago.
Our country, financially, is in the toilet. We are running this country on money that
doesn’t exist anymore. That’s what a
deficit is. Facts and figures for money
that WE DO NOT HAVE. We are living on
borrowed time, financially and spiritually.
One morning we are going to wake up and see Wall Street DONE and rioting
in the streets in New York. It will take
probably less than ONE day for all hell to break loose and have riots and
protests filling our streets wherever we live.
I am not being dramatic. I’m
being honest.
If you have a Bible in your house, I am asking you to dust
it off and open to the book of John.
That’s in the New Testament.
Fourth book in, if you need help.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was
with God. There was no BOOM and suddenly
this perfectly round world appeared. You
cannot have a masterpiece without a master.
No amount of clipping coupons or shopping sales is going to turn this
ship around. No amount of shutting your
doors and turning on a reality television show is going to make this go
away. You can either pretend nothing is
happening and continue to lie to yourself and then stand in front of your
family when they come to you seeking answers as to why your bank is shuttered
and you’re broke. Or you can open your
Bible and prepare your heart and your family and be ready. He will come as a thief in the night. When we least expect it. And THAT won’t just happen to OTHER
PEOPLE. It will happen to YOU.
