When The Unthinkable Happens

For the last few decades now, life in America has been reasonably peaceful. Most of us, by comparison with the rest of the world, have lived comfortable, easy lives.

Only the occasional weather anomaly or personal health or financial crisis has disrupted our general contentment.

And the American Church has suffered as a result. Our Immediate history of comfort and general acceptance has created a self-absorbed, self-congratulatory Laodicean atmosphere, where any theological aberration is tolerated, truth is relativized and luke-warmness institutionalized.

God’s altars have been abandoned. The presence and power of God are no longer the priority.

And now the unthinkable has happened.

Churches are literally shut down. Congregations are bitterly divided over anything and everything. Pastors are leaving the ministry by the droves.

The mood of the public and politicians against Christians and the Church has never been this ugly. And looming over us right now is the specter of increased hostility and steadily decreasing liberty to speak and be salt and light in a rapidly decaying world.

Interesting that this morning, I should be in Lamentations, written by the prophet Jeremiah at a time in Israel’s history so similar to the condition the Church finds itself in today.

And God says that He has “rejected His own altar and despised His own sanctuary.”

So, did that produce abject repentance in God’s people?

No!

God’s people are clueless.

“They shout in the Lord’s temple as though it were a day of celebration” (Lamentations 2:7).

Then the unthinkable happens.

• Little babies and children are dying in the streets (vs.11).
• Prophets are treating lightly the sins of the people, painting false pictures with false hopes (vs. 14).
• Visitors pass by half-destroyed cities and jeer (vs. 15).
• Mothers “eat their own children, those they once bounced on their knees” (vs.20).
• “Boys and girls killed in the streets” (vs.21).

The unthinkable…but is it what we are beginning  to see today in the “land of the free”?

Are we, the American Church, able to see this as the Lord’s hand against His people, against this once beautiful land?

I don’t know the answer.

But I do know that, from Genesis to Revelation, God has always been slow to anger and abounding in mercy.

And when His people are willing to lament and turn their hearts back to Him in genuine, Spirit empowered repentance…”who knows, perhaps He will give us a reprieve, sending a blessing instead of this curse?” (Joel 2:14).

The big question is…as we, God’s people, see the unthinkable happening, will we understand the times we are in, recognize that we are the ones to blame and humble ourselves in repentance?