A few thoughts about GI Joe and Lillie

I mention in my latest book how desensitizing and sanitizing television news can be for this short attention span world we live in now. In my fourth day of observing the riots in Egypt on cable news, I realized that I had to take my cat Sunny to the vet, go to the bank and the cleaners, and stop by the office to sign a few things. My wife Mary was cooking up a gourmet dinner, so I also had to stop by Publix and pick up some cilantro and sage.

And, ‘Oh… we need ink for the printer,’ so a stop at Office Depot is in order.

I hear bluegrass music. It’s my iPhone.

“Yes, Hon. I will pick up your prescription at Walgreens and, of course, I will bring the cat home first and THEN finish the errands!” Sunny would hate Walgreens as much as he hated the vet!

American bubbles! We live our lives! We steer our little ships! We float on sometimes as if nothing else in the world is really happening, except for that which affects us on an hourly or daily basis. In reality this is all quite normal.

In about an hour, Sunny will have had his wounded eye medicated and will be in his bed, probably stewing because his ‘cat world’ bubble was interfered with, and I will be eating some form of specially-prepared Mary Bonsall dinner, sipping on a great Cabernet, while watching FOX News.

“Wow! Look, Hon, those riots in Egypt are getting worse. Is that a tank?”

As of this writing I have no idea how this Egypt problem will be solved, but I know this. It is important! I am not a Biblical scholar, but I do read my Bible. I am not a geo-political expert, but I find that what is going on in the Middle East right now bears a serious review and study.

I am not preaching that the end of the world, or the rapture, is drawing nigh.

But it may be. And we can’t afford to be complacent about it.

Eternity could be in the balance here.

But isn’t it always?

There have been many times when it seemed the world might end—and it did not. I am sure that during World War Two, right after the Great Depression when Germany was steamrolling over Europe as they rounded up and killed every Jewish person they could find, and Japan was trying to rule the rest of the world with violence and totalitarianism, and our young men were being killed daily, that pulpits everywhere were preaching the End of Days. And who could blame them?

How about the Dark Ages of plagues and barbarism? How about the Civil War era right here in America? How about the Crusades? I could go on, but you get the point.

Is this it? The end?

No man knows. However, friends, one does not have to be a philosopher or a prophet, or possess a doctorate in well... anything, to notice all of the signs of destruction that are going on all around us, starting with that horrible day of September 11, 2011, when, for the first time ever, Americans were attacked and murdered on our own land by Muslim extremists.

Also consider all of this… Somalia, the Sudan, Mexico, Spain, France, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tunisia, North Korea, Mexico and now Egypt. This a just a partial list of political unrest, terror, and financial meltdowns, to say nothing of the failed banking and housing and big time bailouts right here in the good old US of A that have buried us underneath a mountain of debt which we can never pay back.

How about natural disasters? As I write this commentary, the biggest cyclone in the history of the modern world is pounding Queensland, Australia. The same area that was flooded in a Noah-era style rainstorm just a few weeks ago.

Volcanoes are blowing off steam all around the world, while earthquakes and floods have swept away parts of India, the Caribbean, and South America. Much of the U.S. is stuck in a blizzard and deep freeze of enormous proportions. There have been 13,000 flights canceled in two days, and this is actually about the third such blizzard this year.

Do you ever remember seeing so many tornadoes and deadly hurricanes? Katrina alone wiped out an American city, and how many small towns from Kansas to Mississippi to Arkansas to Oklahoma have been blown away in just the last couple of years?

Sometimes we get hit right in the bubble, and it hurts too. My own city of Nashville almost flooded away last May. A tornado took my friend’s home in Hendersonville, TN, and another tornado near my farm in Macon County, TN, took a friend’s daughter and granddaughter when their home was blown away.

Listen, my friends, I am speaking in generalities here and, of course, much good rises up in these times of strife and trouble. But still, you must agree that the plate has been pretty full of late.

Heck, the moon even turned blood red during a solar eclipse about a month ago, and birds have fallen out of the sky all around the world for no reason. Now that does sound biblical, doesn’t it?

Let’s get back to the Egyptian riots on TV. As we eat our dinner, one talking head after another is trying to explain it all to us. We pour another glass of Napa Valley and do out best to make sense of the overall picture. Israel is about to be surrounded by extreme Muslim entities that have pledged to destroy their country and kill every Jew in sight.

This is a fact.

Is Iran behind all of it? Hamas and Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood hate America as much as they do the Israelites. So just what does happen to America here?

It is easy to brush it off as just another TV show, but we really cannot. I know that one bunch of people in the streets throwing rocks in the Mid-East looks just like any other, and it seems they are always right there yelling and screaming, while we eat. But we need to be paying some attention as we bubble along.

Suppose this is it! What if all of the natural disasters and political unrest and the exploding Middle East are signs that portend the return of Jesus Christ and the End of Days, as we know it?

I know it seems scary, but we should not embrace fear. We should embrace prayer and faith in Him, the One who created this earth. If we are living in the Way and the Truth and the Life that is in Him, then we will be just fine.

I am just saying that it is all right to live in our American bubbles and execute our individual game plans and await the Super Bowl. But I implore you to pay some attention, my brothers and sisters, because something is indeed going on around us. It’s much more than just a newscast with lots of video and loud talking.

Don’t be overrun or desensitized by it, but do take the time to give it serious thought.

Take the time to read your Bible and be prayerful. Not fearful.

Hold up your loved ones and hold on to Jesus, for He is the answer in all things. Only God knows whether all of these things are just bumps in the road of a constantly evolving world—or if He is preparing His Son to come quickly.

Take heart and be glad in the promises of the true Lord and King.

Today I have put a lot of thought and prayer into this Middle Eastern turmoil, but after finishing this writing I am going back into my bubble. I really have to go and love on my cat Sunny. I am sure he is still mad about the vet!