KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

Remember that scene from Gladiator where Russell Crowe comes into the arena and danger is coming at him from all sides?  His enemies taunt and circle and look for opportunity to slip up on his blind side.  Watch that cretin with the sword AND the crouching tiger, Maximus.  They're roaming for the shortest road to your vulnerability.

Lately that's how life feels.  The guy at the airport security line spoke for more than just himself when he backed up and told them not to touch his "junk".  We are feeling stalked by some closeness that's just a bit too close.

That healthcare plan circles and gouges at my freedom.  The plan has just barely gone into play and already the pie-in-the-sky promises have melted away.  What is left are the leg irons that will chain us to bureaucracy.  It's really gonna be different to not be able to have the healthcare we are used to/when we are used to having it.

If you fly, there are the pat-pat/naked body scan problems pushing into our dignity.  I understand we need to tighten security; I want to tighten air security.  But there's a persistent picture of terrorist merriment in my head as I hear them laugh "you'll never believe what we've got them doing NOW!"  Speaking of air security, did you get that email that suggested putting an enclosed booth in the boarding line?  When passengers step in, instead of x-raying them, when the door closes it will detonate any explosive device they have hidden in/on their body.  What a win-win!  Explosion contained.  No racial profiling.  No long and expensive trials.  You hear a muffled POW and then the announcement "attention standby passengers, we have a seat available on flight number...."

That's pretty funny, but the dangerous world that presses in on us is not so funny.  Borders are invasively porous.  Inflation is stalking as the dollar is devalued.  Today a terrorist tried in CIVIL COURT (as if he were a bank robber) was acquitted on all but one of his 285 counts...and gave justice a whoopin'.  Glen Beck suggests we buy a cabin in the woods as a back-up plan for our times. But Jon Stewart disagrees,  saying "we live in hard times, not the end times".  Let's see, should we get our theology from Beck or Stewart...Stewart or Beck?

One by one, our egg baskets (our traditional places of safety) are being taken away.  We can't trust our money...it may soon be Monopoly money. We can't trust government or our status/strength as a world power.  It's getting increasingly harder to trust basic civilization.  And so what does that leave us?

I'm thinking that all along the Lord would have us put our full weight on His sovereignty.
He alone has the power to orchestrate my next breath.  He knows the purpose He has for my life and the number of days that it will take to accomplish that purpose.  
He is the Observer of my life arena.

I raise my confidence to the King of Kings.


"The LORD Almighty has sworn this oath: 
'It will all happen as I have planned.
It will come about according to my purposes...
I have a plan for the whole earth, for my mighty power 
reaches throughout the world'."
Isaiah 14.26