When asked why tired police and firefighters from New Orleans were being sent to Las Vegas for R&R the Mayor told the reporter “This is a party town, Get over it.”  Now, I hate seeing people suffer as much as anyone, but something is being missed in all this.  The Bible says the wise man builds his house on a rock, not in a swamp.  If a swamp is all you have ever known, it’s hard to imagine living anywhere else. Can I suggest that everyone needs to think “higher?”  Can I suggest loftier thinking, or moving to higher ground?    The first settlers of the New World left Holland (with all it’s dikes and levees), and spoke of building a “city on a hill.”  They longed for something higher both politically and spiritually.  If we cannot think that “high” anymore, perhaps we should be thinking at least in terms of a “land fill” rather than a swamp.   Modern technology has a way of masking reality.  Jesus called it the “deceitfulness of riches.”  I believe it was the late Malcom Forbes who said, “The answer to 99 percent of all problems is ‘Money.’” 

The political gunfire and firefights have just begun.  Many are convinced that what we now have is a money problem, and we all know how the government loves to spend money.  How to house, clothe, re-educate, and re-located a million people shall be more daunting than Moses trying to get the Israelites to the Promised Land.  (None of the Government Administration made it, by the way,  for all the walking around in circles in the wilderness, except for two “evacuees” named Joshua and Caleb. 

New Orleans is the original home of Voodoo economics.  Deep in the murky shadows of the French Quarter was an industry of darkness. Only a spiritual idiot plays around with darkness, and this is the conundrum.  American cannot decide what is light and what is dark.  Isaiah said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (5:20).   America cannot decide if abortion is good or bad.  America cannot decide if homosexuality is healthy or horrendous.  America cannot decide if we were made by God or rose up out of some primeval bayou.  North Carolina has just become the 41^st state to establish a lottery.  Please don't “wish us luck.” We need more than luck.   

Let’s send help to those suffering in the Gulf States.  Let’s give money.  Let’s rescue the perishing, let’s be generous, let's help them rebuild, but let’s not forget that the foolish man builds on the sand.  Somehow we have gone from singing “Blessed Assurance” to “Blessed Insurance” and have forgotten that Jesus said the “wind bloweth where it listeth.”  His advice to Nicodemus is still valid for every American  today, “Ye must be born again.”  Little by little, America has gone from rock to sand, and I am afraid that God is too wise to underwrite the policy of any Nation that builds too low.  

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