Tuesday, December 2, 2008

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES

Last week a friend wrote, "Where do you come up with all these stories?" Sometimes they're hard to come up with, so I have to repeat something. Not this week. It will be just some ramblings. Sometimes rambling is the most profound thing we do all day.

By the way, it's Advent - time to get ready for Christ's coming. He came the first Advent in the event we call Christmas, and He will come again in the second Advent on the Day of Judgment. Life between the advents seems to be getting more and more complex, although it's really not. We live, we love, we work, we trust (or not) and we hope we can be part of something good in this crazy, wonderful life God gives us to live.

Years ago there was a TV game show, "Truth or Consequences," and that title has always intrigued me. Today we tend not to face either. Truth is what we try to make it, and consequences we think we can avoid. But the truth is beyond us. Truth is not the opinion with the most votes; it comes from God. Truth is what we don't want to face - the consequences are too difficult, too scarey. Truth is that Christ will one day come in judgment, and that makes us very uncomfortable. The way we live, it should.

The other day Carol gave me a box with an amaryllis bulb in it, or what was left of one. She got it as a gift last year and it got lost on a shelf. It was dry, like a hollow onion, ready for the trash, but something made me keep it. I found a container, followed the instructions, added soil and poured on water. Two weeks later it is sprouting leaves at an alarming rate. This thing that was hollow and dead will be two feet tall by Christmas and may give us a flower. It looked like nothing but now it is something, and it will probably be quite nice.

Can we be renewed and restored, like that bulb? Have we gone past the point of no return? Are we ready for the trash? I don't think so. God doesn't give up on us so easily. He's not done with us yet.

Six centuries ago we were in the "Dark Ages," a time when thinking was suppressed and the future was bleak. It was a time when a few controlled the many, when there was poverty of both body and soul. A man named Martin Luther helped usher us out of that age. He brought the Water of Life to the shell of the church, and with God's grace and mercy the Gospel bloomed forth once again.

Christmas is about Christ coming to earth to take consequences of our sin on Himself. We may be entering a new "Dark Age." If we are, I hope it won't be a long time, and I pray there will be someone else to rescue the dying bulb of Truth, to water it, and to help make God's Truth bloom freely once again.

They thought He was dead, too!

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