MEN WITHOUT BUCKETS or MADMAN AFIELD

     There was a certain madman who was given to using matches.   He would run through the dry fields throwing lit matches at the underbrush setting it ablaze.   Often spied by townsfolk, 10 or a dozen men would race into the field trying to stamp out the fires.   However, for each one that was stamped out, the madman would light two matches singing, "Lucifer is great! Lucifer is great!"   Had they buckets of water, they might have fared better, but, for the sake of time & urgency, none were ever fetched.

     After a short while, overwhelmed by the number of fires lit, the men would look back to see that fires they thought had been stamped out only but smoldered and reignited into flame.   Thus surrounded by fire, they perished.   Inevitably, the brush fires would race toward their town and burn it too to the ground leaving fatherless children in the care of homeless widows.

     Town after town was burned in this manner until the madman reached Hislast.   On the road by the little town of Hislast, the pastor walked by when he saw the madman afield.   Calling to his brethern, he dashed into the field.   However, instead of tackling a fire, he tackled the madman.   Leaving the fires to his friends, he proceeded to cast out the demons and that old scratch Satan from the madman.   With no additonal fires being lit, buckets of water were fetched to make sure no coals or cinders remained to set the fields ablaze again, for time now permitted each fire to be taken in turn, thus saving the good town of Hislast from the destruction of the flames.   In the end, even the madman himself poured water from his own bucket, crying now, "God is great! God is great!"

     We live distracted by brushfires.   Dangerous though they may be, they will only grow as long as the madman remains loose.   We so much want to see abortion ended; we so much want to see God step into our schools once again; we so much want to see responsibility return to the public and its servants; we so much want to see sexuality regarded again as the sacred proposition it is instead of the wanton lust it has become.   However, these are but the distractions lit by the madman.   The madman himself must be tackled and it is he with whom we must deal.

     The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the bucket in which we carry the living water which will quench any fire of destruction.   With it we can give the Holy Spirit the chance to change the hearts of mankind.   When the madman is cast out of society, then and only then will the wildfires that have grown up around us in the past century be quenched.

    Then, too, will we survive like the good town of Hislast.