_______Without God!

_________Without God!

Begin your daily routine without God and see a picture that will likely fail.  O, you say, will that encounter be my downfall, or is there another path I can walk on?  The entreaty I seek does not have time for an unseen and in most circumstances a false hope in something that won’t care for me.  My immediate needs are the coffers that fill my pockets, hand me produce that fills my stomach, and gives me a goal to enhance this empty vessel called humanity.

O, weak man that you are!  When the storm was threatening his disciples in the boat, they came and woke Jesus, who was asleep in the boat, saying; “Lord, save us!  We are perishing!”  He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”  (Mt 8: 24 - 26).

At least these followers of Jesus had enough courage to plea for safety.  In some manner of trust they realized that here was their promise of God’s mission to protect them, not from the storms of life’s attacks but the intrusion of sin that will suppress and cripple the human spirit.  

In the repentance of David he finally found the path that threatened his demeanor without God’s forgiveness.  :Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense.  Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.  For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.  Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight that you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn.  True, I was born guilty, a sinner, even as my mother conceived me.”  (Ps 51: 3 - 7).

Whether through the force of nature or the depth of a sin that has brought us to our knees, without God’s intercession our lives are walking a precarious path that can destroy us.  

Look O, man, you who are walking without God, there is no gleaming light ahead for you and only darkness and fear is your choice that leads to hell.  We must take that word of without and erase the preposition that allows for a positive verb of meaning for our direction for purity, peacefulness, and spiritually life-giving.  

Use the term with as a preposition for positive emphasis as; with peace, with purity, with spiritually bound persons of God.  Redo the statement from above by erasing the blank line and walking with God, living with God, and speaking with God’s grace throughout life!

In a time that offers pleasure before God, wealth in place of our souls, and hedonistic desires instead of spiritual entities that promise eternal life with God, our success of planting seeds of hope for those who are spiritually poor will not become our prospect of what and who God’s children were meant to accomplish.  We must seek that road that is growing narrower as compared to that gate that is opening wider before our eyes of surprise and glamor for lost souls.

Ralph B. Hathaway