Alarms

OK ... it is Tuesday morning in a hotel in Atlanta.  Lee and I are on an anniversary trip and are seeing 2 Atlanta Braves games.  And here I am ... sitting on the patio of an ice cream shop, after being evacuated from the hotel at 7am (6am Central).  A fire alarm sounded because of a fire system leak in the parking deck.  So everyone is now out on the street.  Here is one observation about alarms.

When a fire alarm sounds, most of us follow the other lemmings to a place of perceived safety.  We have been trained this way since grade school.  So the walking slow, exiting the building, and following the stream of humanity comes pretty natural.  Here is the irony.  Other alarms are happening all around us, and we don't seem to perceive them.

The prophet Haggai sounds an alarm.  The temple is not completed, and is in disrepair.  The people are in a season of false prosperity, yet they can't seem to get ahead.  Haggai 1:6 says, "Your wages disappear, as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes."  Haggai goes on to describe the people as "spinning their wheels" but getting nowhere economically, physically, spiritually.  The alarm from Haggai is, like most alarms from prophets, ignored.

Last week we celebrated the graduating seniors, and we sent them out with some advice.  At the 2nd service Sunday, I gave these amazing young people some advice I hope we all will take.  Because the world around us is sounding alarms.  Most of us see something wrong, but we wander through each day like those evacuating the hotel alarm here ... doing the rote thing we have been taught, but not thinking there might be another way.  It there a way to break the societal chain of brokenness we see all around us?  Is there a way to stop spinning our wheels in emptiness and lostness?  Yes!  So I will tell you what I told those seniors.

1. Worship Passionately - Make worship both a priority and a lifestyle.  Listen to and follow God's word.  Give God the best place in your life.

2. Love Extravagantly - With love, we are either all-in or not-in.  We teach our children to love or not love by the way we love or fail to love.  The greatest commandment is ... "Love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself."  God's love and our love is expressed in how we love. God is an all-in kind of love and an all-in kind of relationship.

3. Witness Boldly - I saw a video of an altar in Africa.  It was filled with people ... all of them.  The world is an altar where we express who God is to us.  We witness at work, at play and in all of life.

Sunday, come to the altar, hearing the alarm sounding.  Come to the altar actively, willing to lay down burdens and allow God to break down walls.  Worship, Love and Witness as if lives depend on it.  Because they do!