Monday, 11 July 2016

Grieved in Gomorrah

Christian Allegory - The lost seeking salve in sin.


Jeremiah 8:18-9:6


Sometimes I feel like Lot walking in Gomorrah (Genesis 13:12).

I meander down the sidewalk along my neighbourhood street. I see a man standing in front of a telephone pole. His eye is black and swollen. And he walks into the pole, again and again. His nose starts to bleed. I pause in disbelief: Such an odd site. He refuses to walk around it. Perhaps he doesn’t know he can?

“Friend, you can walk around the poll. Come over here, to the sidewalk.”

He pauses and looks at me and then smiles. A tooth falls out of his mouth. He tells me I’m a fool. And he resumes his preferred path of striking his face into the pole: over and over again.

Why does he do this? I contemplate it, but it is beyond me. I cannot understand why he does this. I step towards him and look closely at his face. Tears stream down his cheeks, mixing with blood and pain.

“How long have you been here?” I ask

He doesn’t remember anymore. He doesn’t remember when he first met the pole.

I grab his arm, and pull him towards the sidewalk. And he screams at me and strikes my face with his open hand. I release his arm and he walks back to the pole, and resumes his bloody insanity.

What is wrong with you? What is wrong with this place? I do not belong here. I turn and walk to a field to gather my thoughts. I see somebody lying face down in the grass. I run to them to see if they are alright. They are dead. Others walk by, but no one cares. No one looks. Some step over the body. Others walk around it. A couple pause to point and laugh and then move on.

I am unsure what to do. I just stand there. A lady stops beside me and looks at the grass. She leans over and picks up a colorful mushroom and plops it into her mouth. As she chews on it she grows ill. She swallows and picks another and eats it as well. Her legs weaken and she falls to her knees. She reaches for another and I call to her to stop.

“Those are killing you!”

She looks at me, her eyes as vaporous as smoke.

“What do you know?”

And she eats another. She coughs and heaves blood from her mouth. I turn to her and fall on my knees beside her, pleading,

“Please, stop eating those mushrooms! They’re killing you!”

She smiles and eats another, and falls over in the grass. She lies beside the other body as still as stone. I weep. She is just a stranger, but I weep. I stand and decide I should go home. This place saddens me. And as I think these thoughts, two others stop to eat the mushrooms …


Don't eat the mushrooms friends ... "I came so they might have life, a great full life" (John 10:10 NLV)

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