More On Porky

News comes that since I posted on Wednesday, Porky Flu killed three more people in Jacksonville.

Ginny and I have volunteered to help with the city-wide vaccination of every person in the city so Thursday I put off work to take three required classes preparing me to combat the deadly disease—

Actually my job will be to stand at the door of a POD site and tell people to keep in line.

But in training for this vital, responsible task, we drove into Southside for one class. First time we’ve crossed the river in about a year. As usual, I played the role of class clown to provide comic relief to serious business.

A friend of mine once criticized me for devoting energy to humanitarian social service stuff instead of evangelism. At that time, Ginny and I were planting flowers to beautify a slum community. He said that I’m trying to make the world as nice a place as possible for people to go to Hell from.

Yes, I believe the salvation of souls is of primary importance, but it would be nice to keep folks alive until they have a chance to accept the Gospel.

If you help folks with something they know they need, then maybe they’ll listen to you when you tell them about something they don’t realize they need. And our generation’s eyes have been clouded, our minds distracted, and our hearts dulled to the reality and result of our sin.

Daily we teeter unaware and off-balance on the sharp edge of Eternity.

One of America’s foremost evangelists, Jonathan Edwards—His message Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God is the classic standard for presenting the terror of Hell and the loving grace of God—died helping fight disease.

On one hand, Edwards proclaimed that the only thing keeping any of us from dropping feet-first into Hell, is the pleasure of God.

On the other hands, Edwards, President of Princeton University, died when he volunteered for one of the world’s first small pox vaccinations; he volunteered to be a medical guinea pig as an example to encourage people frightened by the new procedure to be inoculated. Unfortunately his own inoculation when bad, but eventually the new medical innovation saved the physical lives of millions of people all over the world.

In my work on divine guidance book I ran across these words from Isaiah:

Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things.

Helping others, bringing light, being guided by God, and being satisfied with life seem to link in the Prophet’s mind.

In his 5-minute video this morning our youngest son, Donald, continues to teach theology to his cat. Yesterday, he talked about this sort of hands-on humanitarian/Christian service at http://www.youtube.com/user/dzcowart . I get a lot out of disheveled first-thing-in-the-morning talks. Hard to picture him as a slick tv preacher. I think he’s found his true nitch.

Don’t tell Donald, but I don’t think any cat can ever be saved.

But, all dogs go to Heaven.