Picture yourself as a primitive person with no knowledge of electricity or electronics.
One day, while searching the forest for food, you come upon a clearing where a modern house has been built. You hear music and singing coming from the front porch of the house, but you don’t see anybody. As you edge closer to the house, you discover that the sounds are coming out of a strange black box with a colorfully lit face filled with dancing lights.
You marvel at the box, envisioning the pleasures it would bring to your family’s humble dwelling. And you start to think about how important you would become in your village if you possessed such a magic box.
You have no qualms about stealing it because the rules of your culture say that anything of value left unprotected outside the boundaries of your village is fair game. So you decide to take the box home.
But as you sneak onto the porch, you encounter a problem: the music box is attached to a long cord that runs into the house through the slightly opened front door. Maybe you could cut it with your sharp knife, and free the box from the cord. But would it still flash and make music?
Examining the back of the box, you find that the cord easily detaches, and, behold, the magic box still sings, and the lights still dance across its face! So you take the box and run, concluding that the cord is totally unnecessary, and that your magic possession, because of what you have seen with your very own eyes, will continue to operate just fine.
For those of us who understand the workings of an AC/DC boom box, the epilog to this scenario is easily predictable: Eventually the batteries will fail to produce enough power to drive the circuits and, unless the device is returned to a source of electricity, or its batteries are replaced, the magic box will slowly lose it’s abilty to fill the air with music.
Compare this illustration to what we see in everyday life: People of every description, living what appear to be successful lives with no discernible connection to God:
Brutal dictators murder and torture human beings to stay in power; weapons developers devote all of their resources to finding more efficient ways to kill people; wallstreeters steal the life savings of mainstreeters to finance lavish lifestyles; and atheists campaign to keep God out of our lives while religious leaders teach us to worship a jealous, vengeful, and violent-when-provoked supreme being.
And most of these people, along with countless others who don’t know God, seem to be doing okay. They live, they laugh, they cry, and they die like everybody else, right?
Not quite. What these people don’t do is pray for God’s guidance in learning to utilize their talents to improve conditions for mankind, and what they don’t receive is the spiritual education that will allow them to advance to the next phase of life at the end of their allotted time on Earth.
One of the greatest messages Jesus brought to us is God’s promise of eternal life for those who qualify themselves for acceptance into Heaven during their tenure on Earth.
So do not be deceived, my brothers and sisters, by the limits of human perception. When confronted with circumstances that require an understanding that goes beyond what our eyes can see, and our ears can hear, ask for God’s assistance.
He will guide you to outlets that allow you to plug into the Eternal Power Source of Light, Life, and Accurate Information.
© Paul Howard Nicholas