Daily Jewel

by Pastor J.T. Carnell, McAlester, OK
Aug. 10, 2011

“You Know What You Need to Do”

”I was there when he set boundaries for the sea to make it obey him, and when he laid foundations to support the earth.” – Proverbs 8:29 (Contemporary English Version)

Does obedience really matter? Is doing the right thing at all times really that important? From the inception of the beginning of time, obedience has been an integral part of life—even before the first man and woman walked the earth. Listen to this description of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine: "There were two electrical engineers in the control room that night, and the best thing that could be said for what they were doing is they were 'playing around' with the machine. They were performing what the Soviets later described as an unauthorized experiment. They were trying to see how long a turbine would 'free wheel' when they took the power off it. "Now, taking the power off that kind of a nuclear reactor is a difficult, dangerous thing to do, because these reactors are very unstable in their lower ranges. In order to get the reactor down to that kind of power, where they could perform the test they were interested in performing, they had to override manually six separate computer-driven alarm systems. "One by one the computers would come up and say, 'Stop! Dangerous! Go no further!' And one by one, rather than shutting off the experiment, they shut off the alarms and kept going. You know the results: nuclear fallout that was recorded all around the world, from the largest industrial accident ever to occur in the world." This city, which formerly had 55,000 people, is now largely abandoned. The instructions and warnings in Scripture are just as clear. We ignore them at our own peril, and tragically, at the peril of innocent others. The Proverb above describes how nature obeyed the Word of God. He gave specific instructions—He gave boundaries and they obeyed. But as the illustration above reminds us when we go outside of what is right, things can go tragically wrong. Here is another example. Thompson Canyon is one of the most beautiful areas in the Colorado Mountains. The thirty-two mile drive from the city of Loveland to the entrance of Estes Park is one of the most beautiful drives in Colorado. The Big Thompson Canyon is a heavily wooded area of scenic beauty with rugged cliffs and high mountains bordering the Big Thompson River. The road follows the river, and winds around walls of granite, which lift their heads thousands of feet in the air, past timber and grass covered slopes. The views presented along the route through this wonderful canyon are beyond comparison and one never tires of looking at and admiring the wonderful works of nature. In the 1960’s the Colorado Core of Engineers and the State built a new road, U.S. Route 34, through the canyon—which was needed to provide a route to help connect the western slope with the eastern part of the state but it also allowed people to travel through some magnificent country. In so doing, however, they re-routed the river in a couple of areas to create camping areas and an easier route for the route. On July 31, 1976, during the celebration of Colorado's centennial, the Big Thompson Canyon was the site of devastating flash floods that swept down the steep and narrow canyon, claiming the lives of 143 people, 5 of whom were never found. Of the 143, a number of them were children and teenagers who were on a church camping trip. This flood was triggered by a nearly stationary thunderstorm near the upper section of the canyon that dumped 300 millimeters (12 inches) of rain in less than 4 hours (more than 3/4 of the annual rainfall for the area). Little rain fell over the lower section of the canyon, where many of the victims were. Around 9 p.m., a wall of water more than 20 feet high raced down the canyon at about 14 mph, destroying 400 cars, 418 houses and 52 businesses and washing out most of U.S. Route 34, the road that was built by the Core of Engineers. Most of those who were killed were camping in the areas created when the road was built. A spokesman for the State was quoted in the Denver Post: “We learned a tragic lesson here—to not mess with nature. The flood sent the river back to it’s original path and I think it would be to our benefit to leave it that way.” Wisdom says…obey the Lord! Obey His instructions. Since nature knows to obey the boundaries it was given wouldn’t it stand to reason that we would do the same? It makes sense.
Pastor J. T. Carnell