It Makes No Sense

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts that your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

We are getting closer to being able to open our Pre-School here at Crest Bible Church. As most anyone knows, when you take on a venture like this, there are all sorts of regulations and issues to concern yourself with imposed upon us by our government. Most of it is very understandable, especially when little children are involved. They are helpless and vulnerable, and we have seen far too many instances in the past where tragedies could have been easily prevented with a little common sense and foresight. In the grand scheme of things, it is better to be a little over cautious in safety and security issues than to live in an environment when anything can happen, and often does. The costs and hassles are well worth the effort when little lives are affected.

But some of this stuff is just plain stupid. For example, we are installing a playground area for the children, and we have to put down a 4-6 inch bed of mulch to cushion the blow if one of them happens to fall off of one of the climbing toys. I understand that. The ground is pretty hard, I can attest to that myself. We submitted a sample of the mulch we were going to use. The State of Kansas Health Department said the mulch was “too dirty”. I am not kidding. Mulch is ground up trees. It bio-degrades into dirt. It was ground up sufficiently so that there were not any huge chunks and sticks to give kids splinters, but the dirt was too dirty. And the air is too airy, and the water is too wet. So we have to contract with another supplier who uses only a special type of wood and runs it through a “cleaning” process that drives the price up significantly. When we got into this building at the first, we had to install “occupancy” number signs for each room, mainly for the benefit of the Fire Marshall so they would know about how many people could potentially be in a room in case of fire. We had to add braille to the signs per ADA code. First, if a blind person walks into a room and “reads” in braille that the maximum allowable occupancy is 50, how is he supposed to know if he is the 51st person? He is blind. It is like the sign I saw on a door once, “No pets allowed, except seeing eye dogs.” How is the blind person supposed to read that? Or is the dog supposed to read it? What if the dog reads only Spanish? The other problem with the braille occupancy signs is who they are primarily intended for. The Fire Department needs to have a “head count”. How many blind firemen are there?

All of that type of stuff and more can drive a sane person to drink. This is the world we live in, and they think those of us who believe the Bible are crazy!

But there is a sense in which the same principle holds for the word of God. The regulators think these rules make perfect sense, and since they live in that world all the time, they do – to them. They speak the language. They see things the rest of us don’t. Many of the things that those of us on the “outside” think are goofy probably are not, if we could see it in light of accidents and law suits that have happened in the past. I Corinthians 2:14 says, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.” The reason the world can’t see the truths of the Bible is because they don’t look at it in light of its author. They don’t see it from the vantage point of someone who lives in its pages 24-7. God sees things we don’t see. He communicates to us his word so we can live in his world. His gospel is simple: Jesus died for sinners. His commandments for his children are “not grievous” (I John 5:3). They make perfect sense to those of us who have seen the results of life lived in its pages. I don’t understand the city codes because I don’t make it my life. But life in God’s word is far more important. Codes protect us from accidents. God’s word saves us from hell and gives us an abundant life now. Get in on the “inside” of its pages. Your life will make sense when you do.