October 13, 2006

Good Morning! Triskaidekaphobia’s beware, today is your favorite day, Friday the 13th! Do you realize that to this day hi-rise buildings do not have a 13th floor to satisfy superstition? The funny thing is that even numbering the 13th floor “14” doesn’t change the fact that it is the 13th floor; and no building to my knowledge has fallen down simply due to numbering a floor “13”. Major league baseball players, arguably among the most overpaid people on the planet, are famous (or infamous) for their superstitions. I wonder how CEO’s rank in terms of superstitions? Okay, enough of poking fun at the great and mighty for today!
Yesterday I spoke of including God in our plans for the future. Today, something in a similar vein is what I call the arrogance of man. You have seen headlines in the media about the Greenhouse Effect, or from a few years back the possibility of depopulating our planet through a huge nuclear weapons exchange. Another crackpot idea would be to use rockets to shift the earth’s orbit just a little bit to cool down the planet. Aside from making the Acme Rocket Company extremely rich, it is unlikely that such an idea could be worked out successfully. The Titanic, “unsinkable”… wham! Blub, blub, blub, many lives lost in a great tragedy of an arrogant species. Many are the ideas of man for changing God’s creation; remember the one about stopping aging through genetic manipulation? All of these ideas may be possible under one big assumption. That assumption is that God will not take a direct hand in preventing the action someone desires. Set aside the outrageous for now and consider the little things we do each and every day. God allows us a lot of freedom in doing everyday kind of tasks and in choosing what to do for a living and hobbies. Of course, above all other choices, we can choose to believe in his Son or not. However, life under the influence of original sin causes us to lose much of the freedom granted to us. Many of the tasks you perform each day have to do with caring for our body or that of a loved one. Got a pet? Yes, we can freely choose to have one or not, but once in the house that pet will have needs to be met also. Many are the toils of this world that we would cheerfully set aside if we could. Who among us would not seriously consider putting aside the aging of our bodies while in the prime of life, if we could? Declining health? You bet, sign me up! However, the condition of sin in the world causes decay, rottenness, and destruction. In this world, many think that they are free, while in truth they are under the slavery of sin. In spite of what the secular humanists would have us believe, we simply cannot set them aside in this world. Only through Jesus can we be set free of that slavery in this life. Only in Jesus can any of us one day find true freedom, and that may be at the end of a long life of slow decay in our human bodies.

The peace of Jesus be with you,

Bucky