The Rat's Don't Have to Win

I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.  The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.  (Ps 18:1-2)

    I have heard it said more than a few times in my life that it is rare for a man to have in his possession during his lifetime more than five or six good friends.  Think about it, of the countless thousands that we meet in our lifetimes, only a handful can be truly counted as friends.  We live in a time when people are surrounded by a multitude of other people and yet so many remain lonely and feeling alone.  There are people everywhere.  Faces in every place.  Images of great star-studded people blink over screens of all sizes and shapes.  Their names are broadcast over the many multifaceted mediums of exchange.  Still, in the midst of so much, so many stand alone and aloof from all that goes on around them.  Lonely and desolate of heart in need of a true and faithful friend.  Though they are ‘apart’ of all these earthly happenings, their heart is distraught and in desperate need of a shoulder to cry on or a sensitive ear.
     One might say or think that this is crazy.  How can so much be available to us and yet so many people feel so alone?  How could there be over three hundred million Americans and there be a problem in finding or considering someone to be a true friend to confide in.  Surely there must be at least one person in the ‘land of the free’ to open your heart to and pour out your soul’s dreams and wishes.  It is becoming increasingly obvious to me, sad to say, that it is a rare to find a good friend anymore, let alone someone to even say ‘hi’ to you as you pass them on the sidewalk.  The neighborly way of living has seemingly died under the torrential downpour of technological advances of our society.  The technologies that were once touted as making our lives easier are now suffocating the things that matter most...an inextricable need to have human contact with one another.  The innate need to be with one another.  To hear, talk, laugh, play, hug, listen and cry with one another is being obliterated by this technological onset that is taking over most every asset of our lives.  It is much easier to sit in front of a glowing blue flow of light coming out of a tube than to communicate with your neighbor or even your wife for that matter.  Where at one time in America the best family event of the day was situated around the dinner table, but such are rare events in this our modern, hectic life.  Our cars are not like the wagons pulled by oxen of old, but enclosed instruments of multimedia effects.  Wrapped in metal, sealed in glass, and consumed by what’s going on inside.  Our automobiles seem to be a good natural picture of ourselves!  We drive in our enclosed cars, go to our private homes, and step into our multimedia attention garnering gadgets.  On any given night, you can drive down the street that you live on and observe nothing but the blue flourescent glow of televison tubes escaping into the darkness of each home.  (And they think they are not controlled!) Most every person in America is doing the same thing at the same time!  Watching the TV or something like it!  With all this, who needs people?  With all this, who needs anything outside of themselves? Who needs a preacher? Who needs a Pastor?
    The scripture says that in the last days...’the love of many shall wax cold’.  Could it be that all these things help our culture to wax cold against God’s Word?  Could it be that the lack of desire to know God has been drowned out by all these ‘things’?  The preacher was once the center of the American culture.  When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock the first thing they did was bow their knee and thank God for their deliverance.  And what was their first building erected?  No, it wasn’t a home to shelter their family, but the first building that they raised was a church.  When a problem would arise, it was the preacher that they called upon to help them resolve their differences.  Hence the laws that remain this day on the books that are almost identical in word to the scriptures came from the counsel of a preacher!  Laughed at as archaic today, but were the laws of the land during the colonial days when the preacher was held in high esteem.
    Good is being called evil and evil is being heralded as good!  Pleasures are being loved more than God and men’s imaginations are heading toward the flood stage of Noah’s time.  Groping in the darkness, people are racing too and fro, frolicking to the tune of fables and the pied pipers of deceit.  While the merchants are waxing rich because of her delicacies, the voice of the God called preacher is but a faint echo in the backdrop of the myriad of sounds and visions of a world gone mad.  The sad thing is most people really talk as though they have it all together.  As though they have it all figured out and are in no need of any understanding.  And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.  Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
     Yet, in the midst of all this tumult and turmoil, the inner man of every person is crying out for a human touch, a shoulder to cry on, or just an ear to hear.  In the midst of all we have, we are dying.  In the deluge of all these so called freeing technologies, we are dying of loneliness and despair.  We are losing the rat race and no matter what we do within ourselves or no matter how many new technological advances we purchase with our money, we seem to fall further behind.  The rat’s are winning.  While our families suffer, our relationships suffer, our homes begin to fall into shambles, and the world collapses around us...few stop to hear the still small voice of God.  The cry of one in the wilderness of hurt and despair.  Looking for an ear to hear and a heart to prepare.  “Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and wonderful works!”
    You see, the rats don’t have to win and in the end the race is not given...to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. (Eccl 9:11) There is a way out of the race of the rats and God gives all men a chance and day of visitation to step out from the helter-skelter entangling’s this world’s affairs.  He told the Laodicean church what to do...I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.  As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.  To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. (Rev 3:14-22)
    There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother!  There is a God who can and will personally see you through the race...BUT who will let Him!