eroding Foundations, #2

Something To Think About, Learning from others failures:

"What should have been done?"  That was a question I posed for thought at the end of the last STTA.  When we see houses getting ready to slide into the sea--metaphorically, or in reality--we have an urge to do something.  The problem is about all we can do is put up props.  Knee-jerk reactions are generally ineffective.  Often they are downright dangerous.  So, when I suggest that we should ask what should have been done in the past, I'm suggesting more than historical curiosity.  The current storm isn't the last storm that will come.  Gravity, tides, wind, and rain are ongoing realities.  Clearly, someone failed to adequately reckon on these forces.  The fact that a house is falling into the ocean is clear evidence. In the ethical/moral realm as well as in the physical world, often the answer to the question is the structure should have been built in a different place.  This, of course, is the conclusion of Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount.   The house built on the sand was doomed from the beginning.  Those who build lives on personal pleasure, marriages on nothing more than physical beauty, or ethical systems on individual preference, are building edifices that are sure to crash.  When I was a kid a favorite pass-time was building "tree forts."  I can still remember visually inspecting the critical tree-limbs, even bouncing up and down on them, to see if they would bear the load.  Generally, my friends and I had instincts that were sufficient.  Our arboreal engineering marvel stayed in the tree.  I remember one time though, I think it was my little brother and his crowd, drove the final nail in a much abused apple tree.  The entire tree, tree fort, remainders of past constructions, and all, just toppled over. Don't build unless you are sure the foundation is secure. It's Something To Think About.

Eroding Foundations

Something To Think About, Foundations:

Incredible pictures from the West Coast have been getting a lot of play on TV & the Internet.  A video I just saw is of a house falling into the ocean.  The high-tides caused by extreme weather had undercut the building.  The video caught the house at the moment it reached the tipping point.  Like a huge, sad teeter-totter the sea-ward side of the house went down, the land-ward side up, and then the whole thing slipped into the sea.   As I watched I wondered, "How long ago had it been that the homeowner had entertained guests, who 'oohed' and 'ahhed' over the incredible view?"  No more. Being a DIY type I also wondered what could have been done to save the house.  Thoughts of props and jacks were quickly dismissed.  The raging ocean wouldn't allow one to work, and, more importantly, nothing solid was available against which to place a prop.  The only thing left was to get out the video camera and wait for the critical moment. We live in a world in which foundations are failing.  Families, churches, and other institutions that used to provide stability in our world are increasingly finding themselves suspended in mid-air.  That works in cartoons.  In the real world gravity rules.  Again and again we have watched some institution or key individual reach a moral/ethical tipping point and topple.  Again, I ask, "What can be done?"  Often times the answer is the same in the ethical, moral realm as it was for the homeowner on the West Coast, nothing.  No prop will suffice.  No cable can be rigged.  The pull of gravity, the rush of time, and lack of a solid place to stand leaves no alternative.  We have to admit this one is gone.   But, and make sure you stay with me as I turn this corner, BUT we need to ask at this point "What can we learn?" and, "What should have been done?" Stay tuned.. It's Something To Think About. Here is a site where you can find out about Jesus Christ and His plan for you.  You'll find several opportunities to explore.  If we can help you, let us know.  covingtonbiblechurch.com

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Further Thoughts On My Out-Of-Control Life:

Something To Think About, Control, 2

A couple of weeks ago I woke up after surgery--well half of me woke up.  Because of the type of anesthesia I had received, from the waist down absolutely no one was home. "Wiggle your toes."  Nobody home. "Can you feel this?"  Feel what? If my life had depended on doing something with my lower-limbs there is no doubt I would have died.  I had no control over them. Thinking back on my 50/50 body, I ask myself, "Which end of my body best illustrates my day-to-day life?" I'd like to think it is the waist up portion.  I go where I want to go, do what I want to do.  My destiny is in my own hands.  I think, especially, we guys all felt our spines stiffen when we first heard the words of Invictus by William Ernest Henley. We want to think we are the "masters of our fates" and "captains of our souls." If we keep thinking that, though, we are simply whistling in the "night that covers" us. It doesn't take a great deal of thought to realize that my true condition is more like my waist-down post-op self.  I live in a world that is held together by God's power.  Were he to remove hissuperintending control for a nano-second, all that is, including both ends of me would fly into I-don't-even-know-what. I live in this strange matrix known as time, yet I have no ability make even a second of the stuff.   As Robert Burns mused to a rodent, "The best laid plans of mice and men aft gang agley."  Like me, you probably don't speak the Scott dialect of the poet, but you know what it means. I am out of control because that which I need to control in order to control my life is beyond my control.  To live my life thinking, "I can handle it." is to lay a foundation on the sand of falsehood.  My house won't stand.  My life is not built on the sand of my ability--so called--to maintain control.  My life is built on trust in the One Who transcends, and Who created all that is, and maintains it down to the falling sparrow.  That's as solid as it gets. It's Something To Think About. At CBC, we continue a series on prayer, this Sunday morning. In CBC Sunday Night, What would Hosea say to 21st Century Christians?   covingtonbiblechurch.com

What Is Solid?

A friend recently had an experience with which I'm familiar. She was driving on the interstate, I was on a country road, but both of us actually saw a large tree fall and block the road. Neither of us were driving during a storm or an earthquake. I remember the day the big pine blocked my route there was some wind, but nothing that tree hadn't withstood thousands of times. Likewise for the day my friend saw the lumber fall.

Both crashes were the result not of some catastrophic event, but long, slow, gradual processes. Saturated ground, the pull of gravity, changes in the balance of the crown of the tree, combined with a fairly gentle wind caused something that looked immovable to instantly stop somethng else that should be moving.

I'm old enough to see in my life, and observe in others, the accumulation of small forces. I've seen lives crash with great disaster, because those influences were allowed to continue unabated.

What is undermining your life?

lt's STTA.