Greetings and Salutations,
Snow is gone, in our neck of the woods.
Trees are being cut down due to the Pine
Beetle damage – expensive, but has to be done.
Raining off and on this week, right now,
as I write, there is actual sunshine out there; which is slowly submitting to
the clouds.
Carla is doing her transplanting right
now and placing the plants in the green houses to mature – we are about 6 weeks
later than normal getting things going; it has been hard for Carla, she loves
it outside and it is almost like she is trapped inside.
-----------------------------
I was considering that very issue this
morning as I began my devotions; why is it so difficult to feel alone, trapped
and away from the things we loved – especially other people?
One of the things most of us want a few
minutes of our own, free from modern technology, other people. Just a
quiet place to rest and gather our thoughts, and have some peace.
As a matter of fact God encourages us to
find a quiet place to converse with Him:
Mathew
6:6 KJV “But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy
Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward
thee openly.
That time is valuable, it gets us much closer to our God, and while not truly
alone, we are much better than when we went into the room. We are
revitalized and ready to take on the tasks He gives us.
While being alone, at times, is nice, one of the worse tortures that can be
inflicted on man is solitary confinement. Just a few days, in a small
room without human contact can make a strong person crumble.
“Solitary
confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no
matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said,
often beg for the lash instead.” -- Emmeline Prankhurst
We had a young lady in our jail.
Unfortunately, the cell was just one of those small rooms. We didn’t have
any other area to place her. We didn’t like it, but she was indeed in
solitary confinement.
We had our female clerks making contact
with her at least every hour, but there was not a real connection, she was
truly alone.
I watched her deteriorate, it was not
pleasant for her and heart wrenching to see it happen. While I don’t
remember just what we did to get her out of the room (either releasing or
transporting to another facility) we knew we had to do it for her well-being.
All over the world Christians are being
persecuted and many are tortured and one of the main ways is isolation from
people.
The way things are going in our nation
today, we may very well be seeing what is happening in other countries – happening
to Christians in America. In some ways it has already started.
Christians are losing their businesses,
their ability to have freedom of speech. Some State and local governments
are doing all they can to not only limit a citizens freedom of speck but what
the preacher in the pulpit can and cannot say.
How far away is incarceration for those
violations?
The world is doing all it can to point to
Christians as the evil doers and the world as the defender of social inequities
making sin legal and any conversation that says otherwise is consider a phobia
and/or hate speech.
We are being isolated and the world is
trying to set us aside, not for our righteousness, but for their promotion of
the world’s/satan’s agenda.
But, no matter how bad it gets, we, as
Christians are not alone:
Mathew
28:19-20 KJV “Go
ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
Millions of former Christian prisoners
have proven and testified to that for centuries.
It is a time tested and God assured
promise that He is with us always, even unto the end of the world.
Later, Art (-:
