The City Council of San Francisco through a series of actions, recently tried to make Marine recruiters “unwelcome” in the city.  Some wanted to declare San Francisco a “de-militarized” zone, making all of our military unwelcome in the area.  Have they forgotten that without our military, they would be speaking Japanese in San Francisco?   Two things come to mind about that city:  San Francisco and the Bay area, has in recent years become a center of radical political activity, and San Francisco is at great risk for a major earthquake.

        Let’s imagine the following scenario.  The San Francisco Bay area is hit by another devastating quake; thousands are killed and billions of dollars in damages are sustained.  Law and order breaks down, as it did in the New Orleans area after Katrina.  I can imagine that the San Francisco City Council would be pleading for the military to rush in and restore order.  Those who were unwelcome would become most wanted.  Suddenly the prissy anti-military voices would be crying to those in uniform for help and protection.  It is only in the context of the sacrifices our military people have made over the years, that the pitiful people on the City Council can enjoy the freedom to act like spoiled children.  

        How are we like the City Council in our attitudes toward God?  We often behave like spoiled children in our relationship with the Lord.  As we rush through our lives, busy with work and family, with sports and recreation, with all the things we enjoy, we find little time for God.  Many even become irritated when others remind them that God is a reality that cannot be ignored forever.  Today, our country seems to want to declare this a “God-free zone.” We may begin to think that we don’t need God; that we can do just fine on our own.  That is, until trouble arrives.

         The Sunday after September 11, 2001, I looked around our church and saw many faces I had never seen before, and have not seen since.  One lady with a small child sat next to my family; she was a physician who rarely went to church, but she said that she was frightened, both for herself and her little boy.  She had come to church to ask God for protection. 

         Just as the City Council mistakenly thinks that a demilitarized country would be a better place, we may make the mistake that without God we would find some sort of heaven on earth.  John Lennon’s song “Imagine” is a very pretty melody with words of pure seductive evil.  “Imagine there’s no heaven….etc.”   It’s the sort of song that people enjoy until the day of the earthquake.  When we need God’s help in the face of disaster, we are reminded just how fragile our lives are, and it creates in us a humble heart.  A humble heart is a place where God can dwell.  What we fail to realize is that those times when we think we don’t need God are the times when we are living in an illusion. 

         Let us not make the mistake of making God unwelcome.  Not in our lives, our homes, our communities.  We need the presence of God in every area of our lives.  May we never tell God to “leave us alone.”  There are many examples in the Old Testament of God’s people turning away from God; there were times when God turned away from the people.  We need to pray that God will not turn His back on our nation, because when that happens, destruction, defeat, and hardship follow, just as night follows day.

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