Oh, the Human Spirit. So Indomitable. So Truly Weak.

Oh, the human spirit.  So indomitable. So, “I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.”

So misled. So sadly arrogant.

So truly weak.

What do we do when disasters befall us? We announce to all who will hear that we will come back and that we cannot be kept down. We are strong and will come back stronger. Together we can.

When we act and speak in this way, we are boasting in ourselves, in our abilities, we creatures who are frail, although we do not think about ourselves that way, nor are we willing to acknowledge it. This nation that denies God is confident in the power of humanity. That makes sense. If we forsake God, what remains? However, the truth is that we are weak, although it may take a failure, an illness, or death to convince us of this. It is true we are fragile because the Lord says it is true. Through Isaiah, He said, “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass” (Isaiah 40:6b-7). ¹  

How temporary are flowers. They last a few days and then fade and fall.

Because we have left God, we take no thought whatsoever about God’s sovereignty when disasters come upon us. But we should.

“Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?” (Amos 3:6b).

“I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

So, it should not surprise us, I suppose, about how the following scenario plays out.

“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts” (Revelation 9:20–21).

I don’t maintain that the plagues of Revelation Nine are upon us, but the response of the people in the midst of this disaster is a startling, isn’t it? It is startling because when those plagues worked their devastation, it did not occur to them at all that they should seek God for forgiveness and mercy. Those who had witnessed this horror, all this suffering and dying, didn’t repent.

They didn’t repent of their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Sound like any country you know?

Not only did not repent, but they kept worshiping gold and silver.

Sound like any country you know?

Have any of our political leaders, anywhere, admonished us to repent because of this pandemic?

No, it’s “Together we can.” We can do so many things. We can heal our planet, restore the family, reduce crime, defeat racism, unite this country, and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. We can! Together, we can!

Here is the answer that the Lord God Almighty supplies for all of these issues.

“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it” (Jeremiah 18:7–8).

Do we want to be delivered from these disasters? The Lord has the remedy.

Will we take heed? No. In order to repent and turn from evil, we would have to stop killing babies and promoting sexual sins, which are abominable in God’s sight. Outside of a massive, national repentance and turning to God, that is not going to happen.

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy Bing images.