So Yahweh said,
“The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.”
Genesis 18:20
Then he believed in Yahweh; and He counted it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:6
I can’t help but be amused whenever I help my aged father-in-law prune trees at his house in the city where my wife and I grew up. There is still sufficient tact in me not to say it out loud, but all the while I am thinking, You’ve got to be kidding me.
On these occasions, after I remove a branch from a tree using the long pole pruner, he meticulously snips it into tiny pieces with a small hand pruner so each can be stuffed into a large plastic bag. We carefully pick up any remaining detritus lying in the grass, add that to the bag, then seal it up. Finally, since their garbage man won’t accept clippings, the bag is tossed in our car to add to our burn pile at home.
We do things just a bit different out here in the country.
Currently I am working up a very large limb that split off an oak near a corner of the pond. Technically just one limb off the tree, it has a substantial diameter that would rank it the size of a tree all on its own. It is true that often when trimming trees or clearing brush on our property, I will load the long branches into my rattletrap trailer for transport to the burn pile. But there is another disposal method that requires far less effort and time—which I am employing with all the brush from this huge limb.
The limb crashed down in a storm and came to rest on the delta in a corner of the pond formed over the years by runoff from the land above. Over time, as well as silting up this corner, a substantial ditch has formed upstream, the soil eroded by periodic rains. As I clear the secondary branches resting and tangled together from this limb, I simply heave them back upstream, piling them into the eroded gully. While they remain, the smaller wood and branches and leaves will slow future runoff, hence slowing erosion. Eventually, over several years, all this will rot down, replacing some of what had been eroded and adding fresh nutrients to the soil.
It’s a good thing (as Martha Stewart would say).
We live in a world that is rotting down—but in a far less-organic, less-healthful way. This rotting down does not prevent, but facilitates erosion; this rotting down does not add healthy nutrients to society, but determinedly sucks out what little health still remains.
I needn’t cite examples, for we all live with this reality every day—but here is just one:
The UMC [United Methodist Church] isn’t just allowing clergy to live openly sinful lifestyles, but it’s also celebrating sin. A friend of mine who is a Methodist (and a conservative) sent me a Facebook post that linked to a press release trumpeting the denomination’s new Center for LGBTQ+ United Methodist Heritage.
(From an article by Chris Queen on pjmedia.com, published 9/4/2024, entitled, “United Methodist Church Continues to Choose Culture Over Truth With New LGBTQ Heritage Center”.)
“Stories, songs, exhibits, and a special film screening are part of the festivities when the new Center for LGBTQ+ United Methodist Heritage holds its Kickoff Celebration…at Craig Chapel on the Drew University campus,” the press release crows.
The event features Randall Miller, an LGBTQ activist who has long been part of gay rights and other left-wing initiatives as well as Karen Oliveto, the denomination’s first lesbian bishop, while a composer who has written “social justice” hymns “will lead a time of music, singing and dancing.”
Jesus wept.
It is a cold truth that ever since Eve and Adam tasted the forbidden fruit, this world—both the earth itself and those who dwell on it—has been corrupted by sin. There is nothing we can do about that. This is where and how we live. What was true in King David’s time remains true today.
The wicked fool says in his heart,
Psalm 14:1–3
“There is no God.”
They act corruptly, they commit abominable deeds;
There is no one who does good.
Yahweh looks down from heaven upon the sons of men
To see if there is anyone who has insight,
Anyone who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside, altogether they have become worthless;
There is no one who does good, not even one.
So long as Christ has not returned for His church Christians will have to live with this situation. Yet we have a defense against this corruption that others haven’t.
As believers and followers of Christ, and as individuals in possession of His Spirit (as well as that Holy Spirit possessing us), we are imbued with a knowledge this world does not and cannot know. We are granted, by His grace, a built-in umbilical to the mind of God. Speaking to those “who have received the same kind of faith as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ,” the apostle Peter puts it this way:
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
2 Peter 1:2–3
The more one grows old in his or her faith, the more one realizes that it is all of God. From beginning to end, from the first blush of the Spirit in our life to the day we walk through heaven’s portals, it is all of God. He did and is doing it all.
It did not begin by any decision of ours. He called us.
We do not live by our own understanding and strength. We live by His.
Must we work to get Him to love us? No, it is all by His grace.
Have we been left here to slug through the morass of this world all on our own?
For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
2 Peter 1:4
Our gracious God has supplied everything we need to survive—even flourish!—in a world that is rotting down in its own madness.
Issue #893 September 2024
Reflections by the Pond is published monthly at dlampel.com and is © 2024 David S. Lampel.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com. Cover photo by Michael on Unsplash; page five photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash. This and all of our resources are offered free-of-charge to the glory and praise of Christ our Lord.