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August 19, 2012 |
| The Sign | ||
This lesson comes from my observations of how people handled a situation. What I saw can tell us important things about how the world can pull us off track from our Christian walk. And it can also tell us important things about signs that God sends us whether they are signs about problems we need to address in our lives or whether they are signs of the times.
Dallas's DFW airport has not been good to me. The Dallas area sometimes has huge thunderstorms that shut down the airport for hours. Being such a large airport, this makes a mess out of the North American flight system.
Twice now I have spent the night in that airport and it looked like I was about to again. We had had a rough landing in Dallas because we had to land while the thunderstorm was building. By the time my flight to San Antonio was scheduled to board the weather had closed in and the plane had not been able to land. The plane circled the airport for a while, then was diverted to Waco to refuel, then the flight was cancelled. All the people on the flight were made standby passengers on the next flight.
Suspecting this might be another all-nighter, I hunted down a power outlet and began to charge my phone. The location I found was by an escalator that led up to a station for Skylink the train system that shuttles people around the huge airport. Skylink runs outside on an elevated track that makes the train a good target for lightning. The escalator is very long and it takes quite a while to get to the top. As I watched, a sign was placed in front of the escalator, partly blocking it. The sign announced that Skylink was not running.
I spent a couple hours watching how people handled this sign and found it to be a lesson that we can apply to our own lives. But before I tell you what I saw, here are some relevant scriptures. First from Matthew 13.
18"Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 22The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. 23But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."1
Now from 1 Thessalonians 5
2 For you truly know that the day of Our Lord so comes as a thief in the night. 3 […] 4 But you, my brethren, you are not in darkness that the day should overtake you as a thief. 5 For you are all children of light and children of the day and you are not children of the night, neither children of darkness. 6 Let us not sleep therefore as the rest, but let us be watchful and sensible. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are drunk at night. 8 But we are the children of the day; let us be vigilant in our minds and put on the breastplate of faith and of love and let us take the helmet of the hope of Life2
Now from Matthew 24
37 But just as the days of Noah, so will the coming of The Son of Man be. 38 For just as they were eating and drinking before the flood, and they were taking wives, and they were taking husbands, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 And they did not perceive until the flood came and took them all away, thus will be the coming of The Son of Man.3
Now from Matthew 16
2 But he answered and said to them, "Whenever it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'." 3 "And in the morning you say, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is gloomily red.' […] You know how to observe the appearance of the sky; do you not know how to distinguish the signs of this time?"4
Back to the story. Consider the different types of people who encounter the sign and how they respond to it.
Some people simply didn't see the sign. I don't see how but they treated it as though someone had thoughtlessly left an obstacle in their way. It was so bad in one case that a woman got the wheel of her roller bag caught in the sign and dragged the sign so it couldn't be seen by others. But she never even tried to read the sign. I put it back because by then I had become engrossed in watching how people reacted to it.
Some people misunderstood the sign. I don't think they took the time to look at it carefully and probably some of them didn't know that Skylink was the name of the train system. They thought the sign was saying that the escalator was not working. This confused many of them for a while because they could see that the escalator was still running. Some decided to take the elevator instead. It was right next to me so I was able to explain to them what the sign was saying. Others must have decided the escalator must have been fixed and the sign was wrong. They took the escalator.
Some others came in groups and often the ones in the lead were too busy leading and wouldn't stop to look at the sign. They headed up the escalator. The ones near the end of the group stopped to look at the sign and realized what it meant but the rest of the group was already on the escalator and couldn't come back. So they climbed on the escalator as well, even though they knew it was pointless.
Also in this group were the people who stopped to read the sign and understood it but saw some other people on the escalator and decided to ignore the sign.
A similar group was families with small children. The children didn't read the sign and started up the escalator before their parents could read the sign. By the time the parents understood the problem, the kids were on their way up. The parents couldn't let the kids go by themselves so they followed them up.
A large number of people had made themselves stupid and were unable to understand the sign. Many people don't realize that talking on a cell phone makes you less able to do whatever else you are trying to do. This applies to driving a car as well as navigating an airport and understanding a sign. As a result some of them walked right past the sign without reading it and others misunderstood it.
But there were some people who stopped to read the sign and understood it and went back to the walkway.
Some of these people who read and understood also looked up the escalator and saw other people going up and rejected the impulse to follow them and went back to the walkway.
And there were others who, even while they were 20 feet away, saw the sign but probably couldn't have read it but knew it could only mean one thing. So they turned back to the walkway. Maybe they knew the escalator only went to the train station and since the escalator was running the train must not be. Maybe they knew the train wouldn't run in bad weather and were already thinking the sign might be there.
All the reasons that people ignored the sign are the same reasons that can draw us away from the Christian walk. One of these is not being watchful. Satan doesn't pull us away in one big step but in a bunch of small steps that he hopes we will not see. And the brother to this is not being informed. If we know where we are going and we have a compass we will soon know when we are starting to go off track and we will know how to get back on track.
And we can also be pulled away by the things of this world. The groups we are in whether they are friends, coworkers or classmates can exert a strong pull on us. We want and even need that companionship, but the wrong companions can pull us in the wrong direction or at least keep us from moving forward.
Some of these groups we choose to be a part of but some of them are commitments we have taken on and now those commitments threaten to take over our lives. Slowly they have grown and are now cutting into our prayer time, our Bible reading time, our time to spend with other Christians, and our time to spend helping and ministering to others.
The world offers an endless landscape of pleasures to confuse us, distract us, or just to waste our time and make us unproductive. The list is too long to include them all but they cover the range from ancient ones like beer and wine to modern ones like Facebook.
These same things that can pull us off the Christian walk can also cause us to miss or misunderstand the signs that God sends to us. These may be signs that God sends to help us in that walk or they may be signs of his coming.
We must be watchful, informed, and wise, trusting only in his word and not in man.
1 New International Version
2 New International Version
3 Aramaic New Testament in Plain English
4 Aramaic New Testament in Plain English