The Ditch in Front of Us

As a teenager in Ketchum, Oklahoma, I owned a hybrid. Not an electric/gas hybrid, but a hybrid of parts from a Ford Maverick and a Mercury Comet. My parents provided it for me and I was grateful. One winter day, following classes at Ketchum High, it had snowed and the Ketchum streets were iced over. I pulled out of the parking lot and as I approached the highway that ran next to the school, the car in front of me slid to a quick stop. I hit my brakes, only to begin sliding uncontrollably toward a ditch. Fear struck me...what was I going to do? how would I get out this? how would my dad react to my carelessness and a wrecked car? But just then, the car behind me also slid and bumped the corner of my bumper causing me to straighten out and head directly for the highway. I didn't crash or get stuck! Our society is just like my car. Its heading uncontrollably toward the ditch and there it will crash unless another collision causes it to straigthen out. We have no traction because we are not living by the standard of the One who is over every society. Energy is being used, efforts are being made, wheels are stopped, but it is still heading toward an abrupt, damaging stop, because our human efforts don't deal with the real issue which is spiritual. What collision will it take to get our society going the right way? It may take economic catastrophe like the one some are predicting, or it may be a revival that straightens us out. Let's pray it is the later before the former. When the church lives out the gospel in a way the actually affects their lives, then the world we see the reality of what God's principles can do for a people who follow him. The early church had the favor of everyone in Jerusalem because they lived those principles. Let us do the same and pray that we have the same result.