Thursday, July 14, 2016
What sorrow
awaits you who say, “If only the day of the Lord were here!”
You have no idea what you are wishing for. That day will bring darkness, not light. In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—only to meet a bear. Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—and he’s bitten by a snake. Amos 5:18-19(NLT)
You have no idea what you are wishing for. That day will bring darkness, not light. In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—only to meet a bear. Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—and he’s bitten by a snake. Amos 5:18-19(NLT)
Amos was speaking to his culture of the national
leaders who would maintain a façade of being “Israel” the special chosen family
of God. However, they were far from worshipping
in
spirit and truth. As Isaiah
said
And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their
hearts are far from me. And their
worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote. Isaiah 29:13(NLT)
Amos was pointing specifically to those who were
crying out to God for justice, praying for The Day of the Lord to arrive;
but if God had shown-up their situation would go from bad – to worse – to
nightmare! It would be like running from
the lion of persecution and oppression, only to meet the bear of the entrenched
power structure, and, in turning away to lean against the wall of self-pity in
your own house, and being bitten by a snake.
As those great philosophers Roy Clark and Buck Owens
used to sing, gloom, despair and agony on me![ii]
A few months ago I wrote in this space[iii]
about a Pyrrhic Victory, where the cost of victory far outweighs what
you wind up with. You start out with
100,000 soldiers to take a hill; the battle is so fierce that you AND
your enemy lose 98% of your troops, and blow the hill to smithereens in the
process. You don’t even have room enough
to bury the dead in what’s left. Can you
call THAT
a victory?
I’ve been thinking (a whole lot) about Black
Lives Matter and the heavy duty lifting of the whole cultural swing
in which we find ourselves today. It is
a “war” from many perspectives, and there are many more questions than
answers.
Unfortunately, the most angry, (people of color who
live with being marginalized and want change fast – so much so, that it would
make King Pyrrhus’ head spin…as well as whites who feel their enfranchised
control slipping-away) – these most angry make me wonder
what will be left if either “wins” or even survives.
Usually, when Pyrrhus is done the only winners
are the circling vultures ready to clean up the battlefield. And I cannot help but sense that we are
running from the lions and bears, right into the waiting snakes. What are we going to have left for both
sides when this is a footnote in the history books?
On the whole, I agree with the basic premise of BLM
– wherever white rule and oppression of people of color exists, it ought to be destroyed. But the ammunition ought to be the
caliber of what Jesus said through the
apostle Paul:
See that no
one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all
people. 1 Thessalonians 5:15(NLT)
For You Today
I have two questions I always ask when looking at what
happens in our culture:
1. Will
what’s being done further the kingdom of
God?
2.
How
can I plug-into what’s happening with the
reality that only love conquers evil?
Go to the VIDEO
[i] Title Images: (Lion) By
Anmol Waychal, via Wikimedia
Commons, (Bear) By Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia
Commons,
(Snake) By Retiredplayboy (Own work), via Wikimedia
Commons
[ii][ii]
GLOOM, DESPAIR AND AGONY ON ME, From the TV Show "Hee-Haw" (1969 -1992)
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