Hurricane Ike Effect

It's 5:30 CST in Galveston TX and Ike is slamming. Hard. Flooding. Destroying. Right now. People are dying. Homes are being leveled. Businesses being destroyed. Families being ripped apart.

What effect will Ike have on me?

1. Gas prices will go up. But I'm numb to that now.
2. There'll be even more pleas for financial assistance hit my inbox. Numb there too.
3. I'll think about Katrina and Gulfport MS and I'll feel a little sad for a minute. Numb.

What effect? Nothing really.
Hey, I'm being honest. I don't care.

Yeah, I'll watch the news and make some remarks about Ike in church on Sunday. We'll pray general prayers for the situation. Some of us may even go down there and help out for a week like Tim, Sarah, Mark, David and 1000s of others did in 2005.

'But aren't pastors supposed to care?' you ask. Well, yeah, but I don't.
And neither do you. Do you know why?

It's news.

News Numbness
That is why I don't care. And why you don't either. Nobody REALLY cares about news. It's just data streaming by our faces faster than real life.

We care more about sports than we do news.
We're so full of news that it's lost our interest.
We 'know' more instantaneously, have more data at our fingertips, just MORE. And we're numb. We know so much data that we don't don't anything or care about anything.

I just don't care anymore. And it's killing me.

Is It Killing You?
It's getting so bad that I don't even care what happens across the street or down the hall. I don't care about my neighbor or my friend or my family - because we're all just news.

We're programmed to believe and feel only what we want to feel.
We're numb.

When I stop caring, then that starts killing you. I'm a part of your oppression, your injustice. I become the problem. And if you're like me, you are too.

The worst part?
Jesus' Good News of the Kingdom of God has become just news to me. I treat it the same way I do Ike.

I'm numb to it, indifferent, only consider it insofar as it matters to my daily living. It's an inconvenience like high gas prices. Wow. I suck.

And that is getting to me. Getting me to worry about my own soul, about OUR SOULS. Maybe I'm starting to care. Some.

Lord have mercy on me. Renew a right spirit within me. I need to hear and feel and move according to the GOOD news. Wow. We all do.

I'm drowning in my own indifference. I can't save myself.
Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God for our glorious victory in Christ!