Rolling On

       
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.

Will Durant

Your writer is a totally blind, 100% disabled, Medical Officer Veteran. My world revolves around the audio media. I hear overpaid announcers talk about every type of sports fields, parks, other activities paid for by my taxes. Yet, the blind-crippled-disabled, can not participate in most of these things. As one restaurateur told me, "We do not want handicap people in our business because it makes the normal people feel bad." It is very much that way at the church house, school house, court house. It takes "walking by faith" to get the disabled and disenfranchised through this "veil of tears."

I so enjoy hearing actors portray other people... walk into character. I like the Broadway stage (For many years I owned a condominium in Manhattan, to this day still have 250 playbills from Broadway plays. I heard some of the great actors, Claudette Colbert-Mickey Rooney-Lauren Bacall-etc). One of the great musicals of my lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along. My lifetime has been observing a nation of people, just rolling along toward the brink of disaster. Our nation, indeed the world, will not end with a bang or even a whimper, but from rotness within. Flying into Manhattan, the lady in the harbor always gave me a chill.

It is not politically correct to even discuss the morals and decadence of our country, we have become a profane culture. Government agencies are like card sharks, always dealing a few cards to the underlings, while they deal themselves a royal flush. I have never been able to swallow-foolishness involved in separating Americans because of skin color, because of certain club-fraternal memberships, because some ancestor was lucky enough to strike it rich... not because of ability, but just pure dumb luck. My fellow Americans, even in my lifetime have forgotten that we are all pilgrims on the same journey, it just so happens that some have better roadmaps.

For those of us who did not win life's lottery, it is so easy to become discouraged. This totally blind veteran, born in poverty, graduating from a small country school, 13 in my graduating class, working my way through 8 years of university so that I can jump through every hoop the government forced in order to professionally-militarily serve my country. Was first robbed of my dreams, then my security, and lastly, at the sunset of life, my dignity. At the time this writer went to school, there were no student loans or grants and from poverty, you worked your way through.

News people are so excited about some cartoons published in France. There has been a 1,500 year battle between the followers of Islam and the followers of Jesus. Seven hundred million Islamic women are not allowed to look into the eyes of any man. In Saudi Arabia, women not allowed to drive a car. This writer, world traveler, traveled in many of the 42 Muslim countries, it was not unusual to see chopped off hands. Yet, like the Paris magazine that published cartoons about Mohammad, no one has criticized the same magazine for publishing cartoons about Christianity, nor the enslavement of women in Islamic countries. Our American "do-gooder" women just concerned about women within the borders of North America, the few borders that are left.

When we think of the holiness of God, the discipline and character of our ancestors, we tremble in the knowledge that God is still in charge. Just this week, a national program revealed that 19% of all high school seniors have had at least four sexual experiences before graduation. We know that 52% of all black babies are aborted. A mother is the holiest thing alive.

For most of my lifetime, pretenders on stage, church house, school house and even at my house, we did not want not to be different from unbelievers. Sinners have so much fun. Madison Avenue and all advertisers want all Christians to dress, talk, act like unbelievers. Christians are so ashamed of God's word... just keep your spiritual feelings inside the church house. We don't worry about fooling God, just fool everyone else. The Caretaker of the planets of the universe is to busy counting the hairs on our head (Luk, 12:7) to notice our sins, indifference, pretending, play acting.

Here we are, at the first of another year, things are certainly no better. In the Old Testament, the beginning of the year, devotion to God meant the presentation of First Fruits. You must put flesh and blood on the people of the Bible, their faith, their character. They brought the first of their harvest, the first of their livestock, even presented their first children to God. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. If under Jewish law God required First Fruits, the tithe, certainly under grace we should give "cheerfully" First Fruits of every blessing. Whether it is a stock transaction or a real estate sale, the time is rapidly coming when the Christian Testimony, even in America will be outlawed in the public square, restricted to a house of worship. If Christ is our life, if his righteousness possesses us our profession, to that possession must be evident in our daily walk, only then can we "merrily roll along." You cannot sell-give-share anything which you do not possess.

My only child, my son is a Ph.D. Professor at a large Baptist Seminary. He goes out with Seminarians to witness to the unsaved in the community. In one park, he and a student found two fifth-grade students having sex on a park bench. How much worse can this ungodly world get? Do those in the pulpits and pews of America really care? Are we content to just "roll on"? The history of this planet involves a battle for the souls of mankind.