On the southern side of Manchester Road, along a brief sliver of Route 66, in the St. Louis bedroom community of Maplewood, Missouri, a retail stroll from door front to door front delights one’s present hunger pang. There, a Southerner can forget good fried chicken after savoring a perfectly oozing grilled cheese, chocolate to make the Swiss jealous, fresh roasted coffee at La Cosecha or a fine balsamic just a few sidewalk cracks away.
The stroll is reminiscent of a good ‘ol pig-pickin’; don’t think, just eat. The sliver is a gustatory smorgasbord, mid-western style – self-determining and independent. No intuition is needed, just a willingness to pull cash from the pocket.
“So, they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain” (Ezekiel 33:31). God gave these words to the “watchman,” Ezekiel, speaking to the Israelites in captivity. These words stroll through our lives.
My own life knew captivity, not physically, but by a compulsion always for the next thing. Finished with one goal, the next one was an effort away. Gain is the term used in Ezekiel. Personal rule-making, living faith by omission, I thought, could suffice. I conceptualized “rendering unto God,” but I did not live it. Did I omit God by replacing him? Living suspended, I tried.
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? …. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:1,5).
Today’s culture offers a smorgasbord of spiritual ideas mimicking a half-Bible theology. Feigning the moral high ground, these ideas allow us to continue in sin, alluring us into captivity by the immediacy we seek, falsely believing we can live the righteous life with our own skill. Must we cry to the wrong king?
“Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more …” (Romans 6:8,9).
The skilled man held captive by self-determination risks distance from God, from the knowledge he died with Christ. Strolling along, time enables him while judging just the same. Pride does not so entrap the unskilled man.
Grace cuts through time, for “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all. For man does not know his time” (Ecclesiastes 9:11,12a).
These words stroll through my mind, toward my heart.
I do not know my hour, but I intend to be on time.
Christ dies no more!
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15).