So much to say, how much time do I have to say it?

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.