Intersections

This writer has been around the world eight times, traveled through every continent, almost every country. One interested in political geography knows that there are no two land masses exactly the same. This tortured earth is full of hills and valleys, but one thing you can be sure, all roads of communication have intersections, so cartography, delivery of mail, is more or less assured. Studying political geography, like oceanography, tells you about the growth of civilizations. Cities were built at bends and rivers, strategic bays. At every intersection of roads leading from these cities, and even in the cities themselves, places of commerce, stores, schoolhouses, church houses. Until recently, countries' which Christianity had reached, few intersections where you did not find a steeple. I found in the forty-eight Muslim countries, instead of church steeples, mosque minarets. In Europe, once a center of Christian activity in western civilization, churches and cathedrals, everywhere. In the past twenty years, thirty thousand mosques constructed, England, more mosques than churches. Capitalism of the west has paid for these mosques “via” oil rich empires of the middle east. Muslims attempt to build a mosque near a church, always higher than the church. If the church steeple goes up twelve stories, the mosque will extend thirteen in height.

Life is lived at intersections, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Our greatest decisions are made at the intersections of life. God has never forgotten any promise He made you about any area of your life. He is always there, at the intersection before you get there, a pre-appointed time for Him to reach out to you

The teaching and preaching of Christianity is so simple... sin's ruin and Christ’s redemption, the fact that He has an all-seeing eye, an all-powerful hand. The modernists, agnostic pastors, church leaders, Christian colleges, have been so anxious to compromise with the world, to lead the Christian church straight to Sodom, that the simplicity of the gospel has been lost.

2Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.

3Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.

(Jeremiah 18:2-3).

There is so much to learn at the potter's house. The potter is in charge of the clay. (Romans 9:21) The potter is boss, just as God is boss in our lives. With his hands, he shapes the clay on the wheel. The potter determines everything. The speed of the process, never takes his eyes off the wheel. The potter does not allow the clay to talk back.

God does not warn us when He tests us. In history, the Bible, we are looking backward. The three million children of Israel, from slavery in Egypt, from testing in the desert, did not know why they were marching around Jericho, God did not give them the dignity of telling them why. Through Joshua they were told to march and keep their mouths shut but, as in crossing the red sea on dry land, the Jordan river on dry land, being fed fifteen tons of bread from heaven each day, they knew to trust, the Sovereignty of God, that He can do what He wants to do. Others, others than the blind, can learn to walk by faith not sight.

The black comedian, Bill Cosby, has done a marvelous, humorous sketch of Noah and God. God, telling Noah to build a ship the size of the Queen Mary in a land where it had never rained.

Perhaps the greatest truth from the absolutes and trusts of the potter's house, the price of Christ, His atonement. The field where broken pottery was thrown was paid for by the silver which church officials had given Judas for betrayal. Jesus Christ always receives the broken at the intersection, what better way to spend these 20 pieces of silver.

We sometimes wonder, from week to week, just how the world can get any crazier. Has God taken His eyes off the wheel? The world's most quoted writer, G.K. Chesterton, said, “What is wrong with the world?, I am. I am what is wrong with the world.” My favorite female singer of all time, Patsy Cline, sang it right:

If I could see the world
Thru the eyes of a child
What a wonderful world this would be
There'd be no trouble and no strife
Just a big happy life

With a bluebird in every tree

If I could see the world through the eyes of a child

• Patsy Cline