The World Outside Your Boat

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I have mixed feelings when I think of the world. On the one hand, I think of the wonders God created all around the world, from tiny creatures to majestic landscapes to little children made in His image.

For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens
(He is the God who formed the earth and made it,
He established it
and did not create it a waste place,
but formed it to be inhabited) . . .
Isaiah 45:18

Near Cripple Creek, Colorado

The God who made the world and all things in it,
since He is Lord of heaven and earth,
does not dwell in temples made with hands;
nor is He served by human hands,
as though He needed anything,
since He Himself gives to all people
life and breath and all things . . .
Acts 17:24-25

On the other hand, I think of the world Jesus talked to God about in John 17, the world we are to be in but not of.

They are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them in the truth;
Your word is truth.
As You sent Me into the world,
I also have sent them into the world.
John 17:16-18

Last Saturday Ray and I were in Nashville for an historic society meeting. I received an email the day before, letting us know that a demonstration relating to guns and school safety was planned for an area adjacent to the meeting place and that roads we might use to get there were to be blocked. When we arrived, we watched sign-carrying demonstrators as they trudged uphill toward the demonstration gathering point. They looked like clean-cut, middle-class children, parents, and grandparents.

The gun and school safety issue is a crucial issue. I believe that godly people stand on both sides of the gun rights debate. I also believe that one essential reality is at the core of the issue. That reality is morality. A person who has been trained to do what is right and who has taken that training into his heart, mind, and soul, so that it translates into what he decides to do with his body, does not require a gun law. He has a higher law inside of him that rules his behavior.

What to do in a society in which we live among people who do not have that deep morality inside is another question, a question I am not addressing right now. I will say, however, that the ladies who are in their seventies and above in our ladies Bible class tell me that guns were common in the school parking lot when they were in high school. Boys came to school in their pickup trucks with guns on gun racks inside them. Those boys they went to school with never used them to hurt anyone inside. They were not saying this to advocate guns at school at all. They were just noting the changing situation over the decades.

During a recent Bible class, as we discussed the world Jesus talked about in John 17, one class member told a story she once heard a preacher tell. He said that we Christians are in a boat on the water. The water is the world. We do fine in our boats on the water as long as the water stays on the outside of our boat. We get into big trouble when the water gets inside the boat.

The Lance Berkman family canoes the Rio Grande through Santa Elena Canyon with Mexico to the left and Texas to the right. Courtesy: The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

One of your jobs as mamas is to keep the water outside of your children’s boats as long as you can. Another mama job is to train your children to keep the water out themselves.

And do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
so that you may prove what the will of God is,
that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2

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