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I don’t know if it’s normal (my wife tells me it isn’t) but sometimes, I
turn on the TV, just to have noise when I’m doing other things. The TV
will catch my attention from time to time, but doesn’t have my undivided
attention. It was in that spirit that I was “watching” the movie A. I.
Artificial Intelligence. I saw enough of the movie to see that it
seemed to be a modernization of that old standard, Pinocchio. You know,
the one about a puppet who wanted to be a little boy. This time the
puppet is a robot named David.
Well, getting to the end of the movie. David has been frozen beneath
the ice in New York. Mankind is extinct, and alien beings have
unearthed David in the ruins of New York. What struck me as the camera
zooms on the scene, is that some of the buildings are still standing,
and the two buildings that figure prominently in the scene are the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center. I thought, “what a testimony to the
arrogance of man!” Prior to the bombings, any of us would have thought
it absolutely reasonable that those structures would have lasted
thousands of years. After all the pyramids and other structures have
lasted, haven’t they? So I see more clearly now that all of these
things have stood only by the grace of God. (Heb 1: 3) It’s in Him that
we live and move and have our being. If our proud buildings are so
temporary, we then need to consider as well our humble lives. Why, we
do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a
mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. So, if you think
you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!
I don’t mean to say by all of this that God is looking for an excuse to
exclude us from salvation. He needs no excuse, He already has plenty of
good reasons for that. What I am saying is, if we believe that we can
stand alone apart from the grace, help and support of God, then we’ve
become boastful, proud, and arrogant. I just don’t find anything good
in the Bible about such character. It’s better to kneel before God than
to have your legs taken from under you. It’s better to humble yourself
before God and have him lift you up, than to stand proud and be opposed.
Psalm 8
3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the
moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of
man, that thou visitest him?
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