We live in a fast pace world, where our minds have to travel even
faster. Throughout history, life has never been this way. Think about
your day. You wake up to the sound of an alarm, not a rooster. You get
out of your allergy free, down alternative, Poster-pedic bed and turn
off the electric blanket as you place your feet on the ground. You walk
across your heavy face weight, high density, plush, synthetic fiber
carpet and take the few steps to your indoor bathroom. You do your
business, close the seat that you had your name engraved on and flush
the chrome handle on the piece of finely constructed porcelain.
Next,
you turn on the water with a simple twist of the wrist, no pumping,
priming or walking a mile to the well, carrying a bucket on your head,
required. You grab the latest technologically advanced toothbrush, the
Crudomatic x2312, and slap a dab of teeth brightening, taste bud
dissolving toothpaste on your Crudomatic x2312 and push the button. This
device that resembles some sort of James Bond type spy-ware starts to
go to work in your mouth.
Stuff is flying all over your bathroom.
You are careful not to swallow any of the solution that you placed on
your new toothbrush...you have read the warning labels that say, "DO NOT
SWALLOW. IF SWALLOWED SEEK MEDICAL HELP IMMEDIATELY!" After you clean
up the mess that you have caused all over your faux marble vanity, you
look at the clock that is screaming, "You're late." You turn around and
with a flash you have tied your machine made tie on to your tanning bed
tanned neck. You rip the cleaners bag off of one of your professionally
steam cleaned and pressed tailored suits and run down the steps. Then,
you help the kids go through the production line of, "Have a good day at
school" and rip open the plastic package on your "breakfast." The label
on your "breakfast" says that it is packed full of vitamins and
minerals so you take a bite of the artificially instituted genetically
engineered vitamins and the "minerals" that have been classified as
minerals, due to the intent of medical based research. You get half way
out of the door and realize that your cup of coffee is still sitting in
its automatic fresh brewed, just the way you like it, holster. You know,
your gunshot that you need to open your eyes the rest of the way.
You
only got 5 hours sleep last night. After you played an artificial game
of golf with the kids on the television screen, you had to catch up on
your Facebook messages, send out your friend request and play Farmville.
Oh, and yesterday would have been a disaster if you did not't get your
Sports Center update so you had to watch the days news. When you saw
12:05am on the clock you started wrapping up the day and walked up the
stairs to bed and started thinking about everything that you didn't get
done.
So, you need that cup of coffee in order to stay awake long
enough to get to the next cup of coffee. You drink up and push the
button to start your car. You tell Mr. Bluetooth to open your garage
door and pull out into the man made mirage of a world that God created.
You stop at most of the stop signs and make your way to the freeway.
They call it a "free"way of all things, as people are traveling as fast
as the law will allow them and a little faster to get to a place that
they are told what to do; compromise morals, to meet the bottom line.
This place that you are traveling to is what you have to do so that you
can play on your computer at night while worrying about what you need to
get done. So, you press the gas peddle a little more, risking a ticket,
higher insurance rates and an embarrassing aggravating moment with a
police officer. (Which reminds me, have you heard the one about the guy
that got pulled over and the police officer asked him, "Sir, do you have
any ID." The man replied, "About what?") You pull into work and turn
off your radio. You, "dut dut", push your car alarm and lock the doors
simultaneously, report to work, do some of the things you are supposed
to get done and drive through the smog alert back to your neck of the
concrete jungle.
You meet the kids for dinner at the families
favorite grease pit (the world has told us what is acceptable to eat)
and you and your wife discuss how you will divide and conquer. One of
the kids has indoor soccer practice and the other has to study for a
test on evolution and how man was formed by a "big bang." You find time
for a preliminary check of your email and Facebook messages on your
iPhone on the way home. You don't think that your eleven year old little
boy minds that you are paying attention to a 3 inch screen while
driving instead of him. He is busy texting his friends on his iPhone,
playing his own hand held game with his iPod in his ears, listening to
his favorite pop star singing about "itches and oes" and bumping and
grinding with that hard body thang at a bar all night. You would never
let him listen to such things but you didn't have the time to check
during your busy day. You want to know more about him. You long for it.
You want him to talk to you more but this is the way times are now. They
have busy lives to with school and hobbies. How could you ever take
care of them if you did not work like you do? Things can't change, you
would not be able to keep up, if your schedule was different.
We
live in this concrete world that man has made. Our God wants and longs
for you to get the iPod out of your ears and find time for Him. He is
not looking at the 3 inch screen instead of you. He is here. He is
waiting to have a relationship with you. I have lived in the city my
whole life. Although, I had the pleasure of having a Grandfather who had
a farm....my favorite place on earth. As a boy I played in the barn,
chased cattle through the field, walked through the mud getting a little
dirt on my hands and everywhere else. I remember the joy that my
grandfather and I would experience together doing things around the farm
that only such a place would provide. I remember running to him when I
caught a tadpole and how proud he was. He was happy because I was happy.
He was proud because he provided this environment for me to find such
childhood wonders.
We have a God that is the perfect father; the
perfect grandfather, if you will. He has made this green and living
earth; full of beauty and amazement, peace and joy. God made it for us. I
imagine God looking down at an individual who has discovered something
that they have never seen before, something that He created, with deep
satisfaction. When you walk through the woods on a hike to discover more
of God you are surrounded by His artwork. No doubt it is difficult to
impossible to escape the "busy" where you currently are...I believe that
God wants to get you away long enough to rekindle a campfire in your
soul. Come and let God do the rest.
Sadly, this aspect of life,
many have never experienced. We have built literal walls which have
blocked the young and the old from being a part of God's incredible
masterpiece. He painted the heavens and the earth. He designed the trees
and the waters; the mountains and the birds. We have installed concrete
and metal over what God has created. I can't help but ask the question,
"Do we think that we can paint a better picture?" He designed you and
I. I believe that in man's ever increasing knowledge of providing for
ones wants, man has forgotten about his need. We have forgotten how to
listen to God. I believe that nature, a hike through the woods, allows a
person to be in the place that God has designed for just this...to
listen to Him. As we step back from our "priorities" God can work to
align ours with His.
Never in the history of the world has man
been in the absence of nature, the nature that God created. I feel that I
must give an opportunity to others to experience something that they
may have never experienced. I feel that taking all of the other elements
out of sight, all the busyness and routine, and leaving them for a few
days is absolutely essential to the spiritual state of a man. Come on
The Walk with us. Come, listen to God, you will not return the same.
Disclaimer:
I
believe that God is about progress and I do not feel that a city or a
building is wrong to build. I do not believe that working in a city or
even using a Crudomatic x2312 is wrong. However, I believe that, as a
whole, we leave little room for the voice of God.
Genesis 11
The Tower of Babel
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2As men
moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar [b] and settled there.
3
They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them
thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then
they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that
reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not
be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
5 But
the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were
building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language
they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be
impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language
so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD
scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building
the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c]-because there the LORD
confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered
them over the face of the whole earth.
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