An old country preacher preached that a home was blessed by God and in the advent the home was vacated and empty, it would soon rot, decay and fall to the ground. Our own experiences prove this to be the case for once a building becomes vacant, it isn’t long before the roof and ceiling gives way to mold, the element and perhaps falls apart. This is true even for rather new buildings. It requires life within the building in order for it to flourish.
The same is true for people. We can become so acclimated to society, our environment that soon we adapt and change into more or less, walking dead people. We learn how not to feel, how not to laugh, how not to be genuine to ourselves or to others. In a sense, then, we become dead.
We learn to respond, “Yes Sir. No Sir.” That the customer is always right, to blend in, to fit or to even become invisible. We learn not to offend nor to assist and in this way, in every fabric of our soul, we are lost and dead.
It becomes so bad that we never know the day of the week or the month or what time it is or the last time we felt vibrant or alive-filled with gusto and spirit.
In Matthew 23:27 Christ attacks the lawgivers of approaching life with beauty on the outside, but inwardly possessing an existence of nothing but those of dead men’s bones.
IN a very real way, our own lives are similar. We live with deceit in order to advance ourselves, our careers. We adapt, never making trouble for we attempt to become model citizens on this earth with a reputation of good repute.
In working so hard, we become stale. We become empty and long for the good old days that never were. We pretend to be tough, to be hard. Our every movement becomes nothing more than a rationalization or a justification of why we can’t really be real.
To that extent, we are fake. To that extend we are imposters, phonies who fail to express anything that is real-that emulates the truthfulness of who were are.
In the confines of who we are-we are actually vulnerable, fragile. We actually hurt, bleed and at other times feel joy and require the need for others. No, we never want to admit these needs, but they are real nonetheless.
Jesus came that we may have life and have it more abundantly. His desire was to remove the hopelessness of humanity as he found us.
As our body, our psyches, our souls fall apart for being vacant, we should instead turn to Him, our Lord to invite life that builds and grows, gaining us confidence through Him that came to save us from ourselves.
Stepping outside the deadness of our lives requires courage. Stepping outside to embrace the fullness of life requires faith. It requires a passion, a love of our Father in Heaven who loves us even more.
Thus, we have a choice. We can live in the emptiness of our personal shells, or engage the wholesomeness of our creator.
Believe in Jesus who promises life here on earth and afterward in heaven. Start today by affirming your belief in Jesus, the son of the Living God. The alternative is easy enough. We can go back to reduce our spirits of nothing but the empty rooms of dead men’s bones.
Hard Times Ministries 