“They worship me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” These were Jesus’ words in describing the Pharisees. How many of us are like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time? The Pharisees thought they knew it all but in essence they knew absolutely nothing.
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, our present day Pharisees’ only or main concern is materialistic, a worry for the economic impact. When will the price of gas start coming down, they ask. The people that were personally devastated by the hurricane are not asking about the price of gas, but are dealing with surviving day to day. They don’t have to worry about the price of gas, because they don’t have a car, for that matter they don’t have anything. I shouldn’t say anything because they have the nearness of God and I pray that during their trying time they find this nearness.
This nearness lies within all of us, if only we choose to act “not with our lips, but with our hearts.” As we go on with our lives on this Labor Day Holiday weekend, pause and think what it would be like if Boston or Cambridge were all of sudden submerged in 5 to 20 feet of water and you were being bussed to Foxboro stadium to live with 25,000 other people for the next who knows what period of time. We complain when we lose power for a few hours, what if we lost our homes and everything in them.
When nature strikes, it doesn’t discriminate, even though this time it seems to have picked on the poorest of the poor in this country. I never thought this country would ever resemble a third world country. We supposedly have everything. We have money, an abundance of resources, people, technology, infrastructure, and plenty of food, yet we are just as vulnerable as the poorest countries on earth when it comes to natural disasters. We are witnessing and living through tragedies that many people thought couldn’t happen to us. Next weekend we will be commemorating the four year anniversary of 9/11 for which many people are still trying to close the wounds which that created.
I was reading an article written by Johann Christoph Arnold in which he says, “We have made an idol of our invincibility and our status as an economic giant and a military superpower. We have made an idol of our high standard of living, our religion, and our supposed closeness to God” which made me think about the spiritual meaning of what’s happened. If you read the Book of Revelation in the Bible, these events pale in comparison to what’s going to come. It’s not science fiction as some people believe.
Spiritually, this is a sign that’s telling us to change our hearts. As a nation we need to look at the motto that’s on our coins, “In God We Trust”, and see if it still has the same meaning now as it did when it was first put there. Let me refresh your memory as to how this motto came to be and see for yourself if anything has changed since then.
The motto IN GOD WE TRUST was placed on United States coins largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase received many appeals from devout persons throughout the country, urging that the United States recognize the Deity on United States coins.
As a result, Secretary Chase instructed James Pollock, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, to prepare a motto, in a letter dated November 20, 1861:
Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.
You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.
Our forefathers gave this great country a very strong foundation and it seems that we are constantly chipping away at it until everything comes crashing down on us. The signs are everywhere you look. The greatest disaster is when we as a nation start disowning God.
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