Sunday, May 22, 2016

God-Fearing Silence

   Well, we certainly can’t complain about the dry weather for a while to come. This has been one of the wettest spring seasons I can recall for some time. We’ve had some pretty scary weather blow through the past couple of weeks. One night last week, about one in the morning, I awoke to lightning so constant it appeared to be daylight at times, and the thunder accompanying it was like the roar of an angry grizzly. As I stood in the open doorway of my house the wind became ever increasing as the storm came closer. I had the weather radar on my phone where I could clearly see the worst of the storm was just north of the city headed east and I could tell it was very violent. I stood there in prayer for those experiencing the storm and also prayed there wasn’t large hail, which the area had been pelted with a lot lately or worse yet, a tornado imbedded in the storm. Then, of course, the wind and rain forced me to close the door and at the same time the lights went out. The rain was blowing sideways hitting the side of the house, and fearing hail and broken glass and such, I made my wife get out of bed and get dressed. The storm did pass without too much damage except for a lot of downed trees and electrical power outages. I could see in the dark, limbs from my two pecan trees on the ground but the daylight reveled the whole side yard was covered with debris from my trees and trash from half the neighborhood piled up against my yard fence. I’m still cleaning up knowing it could have been worse as I see others with a bigger mess to clean up than mine. I still don’t like those night-time storms, I suppose because it instills fear of the unknown not being able to see what’s coming over the horizon. I thank God there was no tornado. I guess I should report, at the time of this writing, my wife is about to die for she’s been without internet wifi at home for two days. So sad.

Fear can be a healthy thing as it tends to heighten our awareness and prepares us for action. Lord knows, there are plenty of scary things out there to worry about and most of them we can’t do a thing about. Calvin Coolidge once said, “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” You say, sure but what about: Dirty bombs, Global warming, Disease, Terrorist attacks, Earthquakes, Ozone depletion, Shifting of the magnetic poles and Population out-growing food sources and on and on. Let’s get down to earth here and work with those things we can change and/or prevent. Despair and hopelessness has led mankind down the road of false happiness through drugs, alcohol, perverted sexual activity and a myriad of other self-indulging temporary satisfactions that all come with potentially harmful consequences. Mankind is becoming very evil and selfish.

[2 Corinthians 5:10-11; Hebrews 10:26-31] “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline” (Proverbs 1:7). We are living in a “God-fearing” country that no longer fears God. Even the majority of our citizens, who label themselves “God-fearing”, cannot be heard over the less than ten percent voice that’s re-writing the laws of the land dragging everyone into a pit of debauchery. Fear of revenge or punishment is searing the conscience of the God-fearing citizenry of this great republic. God’s will for man, the foundation of our republic, once known and loved by its leaders and law-makers, is being dismantled, cloaked in the lie of equality. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, for vengeance is His.   TOM

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