WHEN WOLF BECOMES WOOF

Tuesday, June 25, 2013
 
James [ESV] 4:1-17 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? [1Cor.6:19-20] 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? 13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"—14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

  Vince Hanley was a WWII Sherman tank commander under General Patton. Somehow surviving his tank exploding, he had the scars to prove it. After that war he took advantage of the GI Bill and became a High School World History teacher. Two outstanding things I remember from his class are his terrible scars . . . and the saying “The Only Thing We Learn From History Is That We Don’t Learn From History.” that he never removed from the wall of his room.

  Mr. Hanley required our knowing this truth along with the 1492s and Ponce de Leons of history; Humankind destines themselves to repeat history.

  He also taught that warn of very real wolf often enough and people become without alarm, accustomed as though it is no more than familiar sound of barking dog next door.

  Does this describe today for many USA occupants?

  We have been hearing a stream of calls warning of wolf in our midst. Then a few days ago in our local newspaper I read headline “U.S. forces secretly training Syrian rebels”. The 24 inch article began “CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have been secretly training Syrian rebels…” Elsewhere I read the number of trainers is “only about 1,000”.

  When I mentioned this to people, pointing out similarities with the beginning days of our tragic involvement in Vietnam, they looked at me as though they’d just heard familiar woof.

  The Word tells us war is part of the human condition. (Mk.13:7-8; Jam.4:1-2) Regional, national, global war you or I can do little if anything to stop. (I’ve come to conclusion that wars aren’t so much ended by man’s might but by his lack, like a flaming building that eventually runs out of fuel and burns out.)

  There is however war that can be won. Won not by our strength, intelligence, materiel, personnel, or determined tenacity. It is personal. Hearing the wolf within, we surrender to The Lamb and are victors!  EBB4