'Wake Up the Mighty Men'

"Jehovah-nissee" The Lord Is My Banner

*Isaiah 11:10, "And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious."

There use to be a children's song in the 50's about the days of the week that spoke about routine. Routines such as washing the clothes on Monday morning, ironing the clothes on Tuesday morning, baking the bread on Wednesday morning, and so on. We all have our routines or so called areas of discipline that we follow each and every day. Routines that are habitual and hard to change.

If your routine is getting up in the morning, shaving or putting on make up, combing your hair, dressing for success, checking your schedule for the day, rehearsing vocal conversations, then walking out the door, everything is normal. However, locking the door behind you and finding that you forgot your keys, well then, your routine and the day has just taken a turn for the worse. Suddenly you have been put into the worse mood imaginable and everything else that happens during the day only seems to make you more irritable.

The Romans, who believed that everything on the right is good and everything on the left is bad, had a saying for days like these, "you got up on the wrong side of the bed." Of course that meant you got up on the left side instead of the right side.

It is often human nature to categorize lifestyles, routines, or someone's disposition to match a person's persona or personality. A tendency to put people in a box either on the right or on the left, and we all have met people who swing too far to the right or too far to the left. Then there are those people who don't seem to fit in either box. These are the people who can skip between two opinions going one way or the other. Of course there are some people who never conform to or submit to what others believe are normal lifestyles or habitual routines.

Bringing our bodies into submission when it comes to routines and habits is not difficult. They say if you do anything ten times in a row it becomes a habit. However, how do we keep ourselves submitted to the authority of Christ? Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, "Every man that strives for mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I  run not as uncertainly, so I fight, not as one that beats the air, but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection..." We run a race, a race not for a corruptible crown but one that is incorruptible. A crown of life, a crown of glory that shall never fade away.

P

*April 6, 2008