Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well when they cannot be discerned from the top of a mountain.
~Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.”
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in Revelation 3
Oh beloved, it is true. We are, many of us, wretchedly poor. And what is worse, is that we do not even know it. We drive around in incredible machines, looking at incredible things, and want incredibly more than anyone else has ever had in the history of this fallen world.
And it is not enough.
This fool of a writer recently had to take an emergency trip from his current home six degrees below the equator. He lives in Indonesia, on the island of Java, in the capital region of Jakarta. The greater metro area (Jabodetabek) is the second-largest metroplex on the planet. And in this place, 28 million tightly-packed souls mostly live and breathe and die apart from Jesus. And of those 28 million precious individuals, the vast majority make less than 200 US Dollars a month to survive. And these people are the ones who have come in from the villages to make a living and send money back home, where average income can be in the mere pennies per day.
Upon landing in Phoenix, AZ, i was whisked by some gorgeous new bus, to a gorgeous new terminal for gorgeous new rental cars. i started up my computerized machine and glided out through the checkout booth onto gorgeous roads, towards the gorgeous home of my parents a few miles away.
And for a few minutes it was nice to be out of the stench and death and vicious congestion of an Asian mega-city. Then i saw it. The stench and poverty of open sewers is nothing compared to what we have done to ourselves in the “modern” world.
The billboards with their ads for sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll screamed for my attention. But, as i looked away from one sign, the only thing i saw was a huge adult entertainment (read “sex shop”) store the size of a Walmart. And even the Christian radio station had made itself sound so much like a top-40 station that only the lyrics were different (and many of them only slightly so).
Now surely, there is nothing wrong with having nice stuff. But just as surely, the nice stuff seems to make us way too sure of ourselves. And it seems that in having a bunch of nice things, we seem to think that we no longer need support from some invisible god “way up there.”
But, the protection we think we find in things actually pulls us away from the Protection we really need. For, as creature comforts replace the comfort of the Comforter, we find we are really not comfortable at all. And in sensing our discomfort, we begin reaching in the wrong direction to get back the balance we can have in relationship with G_d.
So, instead of finding true riches in things, we find nothing. But the trinkets have so complicated our lives that we can barely hear His voice any more. And in losing track of His Presence we have (as a people) reverted back to the things that our flesh screams will bring us comfort. Even so, the sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll are just as false a comfort as the false riches of nice cars and clothes and houses and stuff like that. They are all fallen – and altogether useless.
Everything in the West is going wrong. And this is very good news.
Can we see it? Everything we try, does not work. Everything we buy, or build, or attempt in our own strength comes to utter destruction. All the efforts of the modern world to fix the problems of life have only left us in debt and destitute of spirit. However, this destitution is the proof of the gospel.
Jesus has made it utterly clear in His Word that He alone is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. And all around us, in the falling dark of the world, the truth of His words on the matter are ringing loudly true. And the wretched condition we are in, is exactly the place we need to be to become truly rich.
Maybe the poverty of the West is exactly what we need to see that we need nothing but Jesus. Would that we would see ourselves for who we really are – utterly destitute apart from Him – that we might finally become truly rich.
