Some Things Just Aren't Worth Chasing After
Have you noticed how important our phones have become to all of us. We tend to joke that we feel naked if we don’t have them on our person at all times. Some of us have become so dependent on them that we’re willing to go to great lengths (and falls!) to not be separated from them.
Such was the case when a woman recently dropped her phone in an outhouse latrine at the Olympic National Forest in Washington state.
First, she tried reaching in for it. Then she tried using her dog’s leash to fish it out. When that failed, she dismantled the seat, tried using the leash as a lifeline, and leaned into the hole to dig deeper. And that’s when it happened …
The entire rigging gave way and she plunged head first into the cesspool of waste below. Thankfully, somehow, she found her phone in all that muck and managed to phone 911 for help. But it took two different fire departments considerable time to retrieve her.
The Fire Department medics cautioned her of the health risks of her exposure and contamination, but she declined treatment, opting to just go home in humiliation.
It seems that that which we love, we pursue, but often to our peril — phones, technology, money, even other people.
We must stop and ask ourselves, “Is it worth it?” Will pursuit of this priority bring me health and happiness, or danger and destruction?
Life is a balancing act. Phones can be good things, helpful things. Diving into sewage to save one, not so much.
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:34, ESV).
“You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3, ESV).
Man Buries Himself Alive for Eight Years
Norman Green of Wigan, England vanished for eight years after local police came to his home questioning about the rape and eventual death of an 86 year old neighbor. Frightened, 34 year old Norman buried himself alive under the floor boards of his living room for eight years in a six foot by two foot hole. His wife Pauline never told their six children where their father had gone, but she did bring him food. While in his self-imposed prison, Norman's hair turned gray and his teeth fell out. Worse yet, he missed his children growing up. After finally turning himself in, he admitted, "It was terrible lying there listening to them talking and playing, but unable to let them know I was there." When he turned himself in at the age of 42, Norman was not prosecuted. He had never been a suspect.
The things that we fear are often more a product of our imagination than anything else. They usually never come to pass, and if they do, the consequences often can't compare to the self-imposed prison of fear. While fear is a God-given gift, a natural response to possible danger intended to help prepare us to avoid harm, it can quickly turn into a curse if we fail to balance it with faith. That's why Paul tells Timothy that "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7).
Learning from the Locusts
Here they come again. Locusts. Every 17 years they return by the droves, by the millions, by the billions--a swarming cloud of creepy creatures which will soon take up residence in our forests, our parks, our yards, and leave behind their molted exoskeletons to crunch beneath our feet. Their encroaching may appear crazed and chaotic, but that is not at all the case.
Charles Spurgeon once noted:
Locusts always keep their rank, and although their number is legion, they do not crowd upon each other, so as to throw their columns into confusion. This remarkable fact in natural history shows how thoroughly the Lord has infused the spirit of order into His universe, since the smallest animate creatures are as much controlled by it as are the rolling spheres or the seraphic messengers.
C. H. Spurgeon was to nineteenth-century England what D. L Moody was to America. Although Spurgeon never attended theological school, by the age of twenty-one he was the most popular preacher in London. He preached to crowds of ten thousand at Exeter Hall and the Surrey Music Hall. Then when the Metropolitan Tabernacle was built, thousands gathered every Sunday for over forty years to hear his lively sermons. For his great oratory, he was dubbed "The Prince of Preachers." In addition to his regular pastoral duties, he founded Sunday schools, churches, an orphanage, and the Pastor's College. He edited a monthly church magazine and promoted literature distribution. - From the website dedicated to his legacy, spurgeon.org
Spurgeon concludes:
It would be wise for believers to be ruled by the same influence in all their spiritual life. In their Christian graces no one virtue should usurp the sphere of another, or eat out the vitals of the rest for its own support. Affection must not smother honesty, courage must not elbow meekness out of the field, modesty must not jostle energy, and patience must not slaughter resolution. So also with our duties; one must not interfere with another; public usefulness must not injure private piety; church work must not push family worship into a corner. It is ill to offer God one duty stained with the blood of another.
"His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness" (2 Peter 1:3).