Intersections

I have taken eight around the world trips, covered every continent, and my passport has been stamped in 157 countries. Whether in the largest city in the world, Mexico City, Mexico, or the second largest, Shanghai, China, or the largest financial city, New York City, New York, landscapes everywhere, whether in the Sahara or the Gobi, are marked by intersections.

In this dark night of the soul, when men are dumbfounded by the corruption of the world, compared with the magnificence of it all, we all stand at a point of intersection. The problem is, in the exactness of God, the intersection of the entire world is based on two pieces of wood, the cross on which our Savior was crucified. The nearly 10,000 years of world history before the cross, and the nearly 2,000 years of world history after the cross, has shown us that man thinks more on a more horizontal axis than the vertical axis. He is more concerned with what is happening in the horizontal directions than his eternal welfare in the vertical direction.

Shakespeare was neither a priest, prophet or psychologist. His writings have a tremendous religious and psychological underpinning. In the Macbeth sleepwalking scene, Lady Macbeth is continuously washing her hands trying to rid herself from the taint of the king's murder. She knows there is not enough “water in the seas of the world, or enough perfumed ointment in the world” to cleanse her. Her husband, knowing that she is rapidly becoming insane, does what everyone else does, then until now, calls in a doctor. The doctor said, “More needs she the divine than the physician.” And the last lines of the play, lines that have gone down forever as the best advice ever given by a physician or by anyone else, “God help us all.”

The authenticity of living will surface when you come to the realization that you have reached an intersection. If you are fortunate enough not the have had any problems, just be patient, they are on the way. It could be financial struggle, disability, or loss of idols (things that mean the most to you). I came to my intersection with blindness, and I have said thousands of times, “God, why me?” The same answer has always come back, “Why not you? You can handle it.” I was not the usual child or young person. I worked hard, studied hard, and behaved myself. If there were any reason to think I was abnormal, it is because I was intent on studying hard, working hard, having esteem for my self and others. It was not easy working my way through eight years of professional university schooling, followed by a direct commission and military service as an Army medical officer, to come out of the military one-hundred percent disabled, almost totally blind, but still ambitious enough that I worked for many years only partially sighted. GOD IS BOSS, he knows what he is doing. I, like you, learned to trust him.

God had an unusual empathy for blindness. Seven times in the scripture he dealt with blindness. More with blindness than with any other disability. His entire thoughts seem to express that those who are blind often see better than those who are sighted. Many of us have learned to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Many of those who can see want a savior with blurred vision... want to pick and choose what they believe (buffet Baptists, cafeteria Catholics). God is a jealous God and despises our idols. You follow him completely or not at all.

I spoke at a college graduation recently and reminded the graduates that the greatest theft in the world today is that of identity theft. I told them that their college education is one thing that cannot be stolen from them. I have had my identity, my good name, stolen by those seeking money. With plastic credit cards, all your business online exposed to the world, the sacredness of prophecy, the security we all must have, is lost. With the new healthcare legislation (an abomination by Obama and his ilk), you will have no prophecy. The legislation clearly states that within a short time of its enactment, all citizens will have a microchip embedded in their body, every financial transaction will be public knowledge, everything reported on 10-99 forms. If not already, the government will know more about your business than you do. God only had to say it one time, “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).

In this intersection of life, your greatest assurance is the knowledge that God will never forsake you. Paul said in his letter to the Hebrews, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). In all our intersections of life, take the correct direction. The Christian has the blessedness of endless prayer:

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

Your greatest wealth in the intersection of your life - before taking a test, before going into the voting booth, before a trip, or even before a critical surgery - pray. Alfred Tennyson said it best, “more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” Only the tested life, only one who has prayed for help, knows the reality of God.