“To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.” Paul wrote those words to Titus. And I get what he meant/means by that. Especially when I remember my young, naïve self.
Yeah, I remember a time when I thought all things are pure.
And that’s despite the fact that I could recall, clearly, the loud, angry, bordering on violent arguments. My young parents had before they divorced. I was about four years old when all that took place. But to this day, I remember thinking, even as a young boy, how wrong those arguments were.
Once they separated, and soon divorced each other, my younger brother and I were sent to my grandparents house (my dad’s parents) and we lived there for a year or two. And that’s where, due to the Christian influence of my grandmother, I started taking all things are pure again.
But guess what shattered and destroy that illusion for me. Never mind. Don’t try guessing. Because I’ll just come right out and tell you. My pure illusion (or delusion if you prefer) quickly disappeared once I entered into our great and glorious government school system.
I know the government school system, also known as government indoctrination camps, is much worse than it was back when I was a young kid. But it was already terrible even back then.
Government should have no business running schools.
Gigantic bureaucratic committee systems always, always, always go into anti-God mode. Whether they start that way or eventually end up that way. In America is living proof how true that is.
When I first started, school, elementary schools were still fairly safe for little kids. And particularly in the south where I started, Oklahoma and Texas, there was still a little bit of Christian influence. But once I advanced into junior high, where kids came from a wider variety of neighborhoods, I started to hear “dirty” jokes, and crude remarks from the boys about the girls.
Up to that point I had been raised to know that a potty mouth kid would get his mouth washed out with soap. And I knew I wanted no part of that. Even as a little kid I didn’t see the point of talking like that.
But, as the world would have it, my little light didn’t shine brightly enough to keep all things pure around me. So, the jokes and crude remarks increased as I went from junior high to high school.
And, we’re all adults here. So, I’m sure I don’t have to ‘splain it to you how eventually the pure illusion transformed into the profane and debased world we live in now. But what’s even more troubling than that is how the world I thought was pure, when I was a kid, was already profane and debased. And it gets even worse than that. Because the world was that way as far back as you can go in time.
Maybe you could say the very first generation was OK.
But even that generation, made up of only two people, messed up bad. And they found out, real fast, how God wants purity. And they found out the consequences of not doing what He says. We’ve all been finding out ever since then. No generation has figured out how to learn from the mistakes.
And that’s why Paul told Titus that those ” to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure.”
And when nothing is pure, as a friend of mine used to say, there’s no bottom to that abyss.
So, that’s why so much of what I write contains flights of fancy and impossible, imaginary scenes and colors and light. Because I want to create at least some tiny droplets where all things are still pure andpoint to the source of hope and purity. Then I like to pour those little droplets into the dried up ground of the world that needs Jesus.
Reading The Raindrops
Little notes fall on the flowers in the garden
From a cloud that’s floating just above the trees.
I can hear the whole sky play
A little song for me today.
Reading the raindrops I can sing along with ease.
And the tympani is thunder pounding rhythm.
The conductor holds the lightning in his hand.
It’s a symphony, a song,
And it plays the whole day long.
Reading the raindrops I’m the singer in the band.
All the instruments are needed for the music.
It’s so beautiful that frozen hearts are thawed.
When I give up self-control,
It flows deep into my soul.
Reading the raindrops, little love notes, straight from God. © 2013
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