" The Hebrew prophet Nahum
once wrote about the city of Ninevah, the capital
of the Assyrian Empire, “Woe
to the bloody city….many slain, a mass of corpses, and countless dead bodies —
they stumble over the dead bodies….your shepherds are sleeping.” (Nahum 3:1, 3, 18)
Hey Gang: Another tragedy! Another time when we trow up our hands in dispair and cry out, "Why Lord?" As I watched the many 'experts' give their opinions on why a person would walk into an
elementary school and kill twenty innocent six and seven year olds and six
adults, reminded me of Isaiah 9:10 "The
bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with smooth stones" With the exception of Huckabee, last evening,
I did not hear any of the so called experts attack the root of problem. (This was written months ago)
I did see a lot of finger
pointing that this is the problem or that is the problem. One expert
suggested that each and every person who shows signs of emotional or mental
problem be run through a series of tests to determine if they could be
violent. And then there were the pro and
anti-gun advocates. I could probably
come up with arguments on both sides of that issue. I really see no positive reasons why guns of
mass destruction are needed by the private citizens on the land - the police
and military yes, Joe next door - NO. But private citizens do have the right to
own guns.
But, as I thought about the gun
issue, I recalled an incident in the book of Judges where Jael, a simple house
wife, "…took a tent peg and seized
a hammer in her hand, and went secretly into Sisera and drove a tent peg into
his brain" (Judges 4:2`). And
then there is the story of Sampson who "slew
a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey" (Judges
15:15). And we are not told what Cain
used to kill his brother Abel but this we know, it was not a gun. And then there was Timothy McVey who did not
have a gun but took the lives of more than 165 innocent people. Perhaps it is not guns that is the issue
here.
While in college I was compelled to
take a literature class. Now that was
like being sentenced to boredom, for I was not a reader and had no appreciation
of the finer arts. One of the assigned
reading assignments was a story by Anton Checkov. I do not recall the name of
the story but I do remember he built the plot around the theme "Man's
Inhumanity to Man". I wonder, if he
were alive today, what he might say about this subject. For we certainly have much more effective
killing devices than were available in his day.
O, we will mourn for a week or so,
but the memory of the hideous event will fade as the evening sun. I fear the rhetoric will go by the boards and
the Press will milk out of this tragedy every ounce of blood before moving on
to the next tragedy and much as I do not like to admit it, there will be a next
tragedy! Maybe worse than this one.
Joel Rosenberg wrote the following:
"The demons of violence and lawlessness are loose all across
America, in Newtown, Connecticut...in Aurora, Colorado, at Virginia Tech, at
Columbine and all across our land".
He also quoted the following from
his book Implosion: "Bells
are going off all around us. Lights on the dashboard are flashing, Warning! Warning! Yet America is sleeping through
the alarms, blind to the warning lights. And tragically, for the most part, the
Church — God’s chosen instrument to bless individuals, families, communities,
and nations — is asleep as well. I shudder to imagine where we are heading if
we don’t wake up soon, plead for the Lord’s forgiveness, and ask Him to use us
to love our neighbors and revitalize our country.”
Soooo, friends and neighbors, I
am sure all of us have, at one time or another, heard or used the phrase ‘butt
off’. I believe God has done precisely
that. The
Lord God Almighty is a gentleman. He won’t force us to accept His great love
and many blessings. If a nation tells Him to leave, He will leave. But we need
to be prepared to pay the price for evicting the King of kings and Lord of
lords from our country; there is a horrendous price tag attached to that eviction
notice!
Blessings,
Gramps
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