Neighborhood Conversations

There's a sobriety and peace that comes with pondering God on judgment day.

I love our neighborhood.  One of the many reasons was exampled last night, where from 5-8:30, lots of neighbors and their kids were in our front yard watching the kids play on the water slide and visiting on my driveway.  For those of you who aren't from Texas, "visiting" is a verb used to describe sitting, talking, debating, laughing, wondering, questioning, sitting and talking (did I mention sitting and talking?).

This conversation came up last night:  politics as exemplified in the healthcare bill and what's going to happen in November as a result of it.  After some healthy, rousing, generally red-state-leaning discussion, one of my neighbors asked me if I believed in the conspiracy of the "death panels" that have been reported in some of the right-leaning media.  Here was the essence of my response:

I don't think there's going to be guys in dark suits with sunglasses sitting in a room with a "death is decreed" stamp in blood-red ink.  But it seems, by necessity, that there will be someone(s) somewhere who will say, "Yes" or, "No" to treatment and thus ultimately whether a person gets a life-saving procedure or medicine.  In that sense, I guess there will be those decisions made.  (I think that doctors make those decisions every day - and I would hope doctors will be the ones to continue to make medical decisions for patients.)

I shocked them with this statement, though:  even though I disagree with the bill and its policies, I'm reasonably okay with it.  That's because I know people who take on that responsibility and have to sit in those rooms and make those calls are people who will one day give an account to the Judge of the Universe for the decisions they made.  That's true of BP execs, Jeffrey Skilling, AIG leadership, banking officers, and lots of others in leadership.  And that Judge can better sort it out and make sure there's justice than any congressional subpoena and hearings ever could.

It's both sobering and peaceful.  It doesn't release me from my responsibility to do what's right, stand for the truth, speak up, serve well, and generally influence the culture for the sake of the Kingdom.  But the bedrock is the accountability that will come - an accountability that is for me too, which is why I can't just sit back and let it all go to hell in a hand basket.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...

I couldn't let this topic go without saying the following:  Each individual person will give an account to God for how they lived while on His earth.  The only right way to be related to Him is through trusting His Son Jesus Christ who died on a cross as a sacrifice for sin and was raised from the dead to give forgiveness and life to anyone and everyone who puts confidence in Him.