In a continuation from last week as it relates to the “sickness” in the land, let me say that whenever human life is taken there is a guilt of conscious because we only have one life. So it is disturbing to hear that this thing has become a trend, an epidemic.
Week after week, our young men are killing one another over trivial matters, things that don’t make any sense. Whenever one of our young men shoot and kill another young man, they both lose; one goes in the grave and in hell if he is not saved; and the other one goes to prison possibly for the rest of his life. Two good men with two good minds who could have contributed in a positive way to society are wasted; one could have been a school teacher or a lawyer; the other could have been a pharmacist or a doctor, and the devil is laughing! But they don’t see it! Our young people have good minds, but they are being wasted.
Church and community, there is a sickness in the land. Some of our young men don’t see the value of self respect, that if you don’t respect yourself you can’t expect anybody else to respect you. We can say what we want to but no self-respecting young man will walk around with his pants sagging beneath his thighs with his underwear showing, trying to fit in with everybody else instead of just being himself — and the parents are letting him walk out of the house like that! Parents are afraid of their own children, saying, “I can’t do a thing with Johnny!”
If I’m buying Johnny’s clothes, I’m going to buy clothes that fit! As long as Johnny is sticking his feet under my table, eating my ribs, drinking my Kool Aid, sleeping in my bed which is under my roof, he is not going to do what he wants to do! Ya’ll know that some of the children are raising the parents now! Parents ask the children, “are you going to church today, Johnny?” — and if Johnny doesn’t want to go he doesn’t have to go! And we wonder why the devil has a lot of them!
Somebody doesn’t believe me when I say that there’s a sickness in the land! We have teenage babies having babies when they don’t have a single idea as to how to raise one and don’t see that their life is changed forever when they do. Their future is put on hold, and a lot of times they spend the next 20 years living on the system! Now understand church and community, this message is not to beat somebody over the head; it is not to belittle somebody or degrade somebody because everybody, regardless of who they are and what they proclaim to be, is somebody!
In spite of our sins, God loves us — that’s why He sent his son into the world so that He could save us and bring us out of the bondage that sin puts on us (St. John 3:16,17). He came to set the captive free (St. John 8:32). Freedom comes through the blood of Jesus and there is power in the blood of the lamb. It can wash away the deepest of sin. It reaches to the highest mountain and it flows through the lowest valley. The blood, that gives me strength from day to day, will never lose it’s power!
The Rev. George T. Ellis is pastor of Union Grove Baptist Church. Reach him at [email protected].