"Mirrored Images....................."

It’s yet warm enough that we have thus far not utilized the furnace at all, three electric heaters proving sufficient for our needs. Overnight, however, while a quilt and body heat, alone, prevents feeling the overall chill (we don’t run the heaters while we sleep), even though she sleeps straight through, normally I’m up around six and headed for the living-room recliner, ready to once again bring the temperature up a bit. On Saturday mornings, with no reason to prepare for another day at school, sitting there beside the imaginary flames equates to reading, praying, and, often, nodding off for a half hour or so. Today was no exception, the overall scenario involving my thoughts being out there somewhere, exploring how the Old Testament comes across to this old man. While we are certainly given numerous characters who frequently experience the reality of God, yet most of the Israelites, throughout Scripture, are content to “worship from afar”, allowing the Levites to burn the sacrifice, preferring the occasional prophet to make the connection, coming into the presence of the Almighty being a scary proposition. Then again, if we are but willing to admit it, it seems to me that much of the Church is no different today. Most of us are comfortable with “religion”, with ritual and routine, with “faith” as we have manufactured it for ourselves. I offer that as descriptive of Christianity as a whole, of crystal cathedrals, of football stadiums filled with “believers”, and of much that passes today for Pentecostal Full Gospel. No; I do not claim, as Elijah, to be the one and only who has it all figured out, my track record in this, if diagrammed, looking like an intoxicated sot trying walk a straight path. What I am saying is: we NEED revival. Not three more meetings where some visiting pastor serves up his version of the Word after four songs, announcements and an offering. We need to know Him, not merely resurrected from the dead, but alive in “me” and in our midst! To each his own manifestation. We remain individuals. Nonetheless, if the umbilical cord is neglected and the well doesn’t receive fresh flow, the water, sooner or later, begins to stink……