Unmindful of Another World

They were not sensible of their danger, therefore they slept; they were not sensible of their duty, therefore they were drunk: but it ill becomes Christians to do this. What! Shall Christians, who have the light of the blessed gospel shining in their faces, be careless about their souls, and unmindful of another world? Those who have so many eyes upon them should conduct themselves with peculiar propriety, Matthew Henry, Acts to Revelation, Volume 6, page 634. 

Dear one, do you sense danger, or are you a sleepy head, and unaware of the times?

Dear one, do you know what your duty consists of, or are you checked out, soaked in alcohol, or a drugged haze of smoke and vapour? 

I am glancing into my past these days, and seeing the drunks as they all fall down. I recall being in a crowded pub, and witnessing a person falling off of a bar stool after being over-served. One of the people I was with said in their Scottish accent, Ah, the poor thing, and I responded along the lines of, That is shameful; she looked at me in shock and horror, not understanding my lack of compassion. I do have compassion for the lost, the lonely, those that make horrendous choices and publicly humiliate themselves in a drunken or high stupor, because I am concerned for their soul, and the behaviours are indicators that not only are they inclined to alcoholism or drug induced idiocy, but they are completely asleep, and do not acknowledge their duty to citizenship as responsible adults. Drunks and druggies require sober people to care for them when they are out of their minds vulnerable, and I find this to be one of the most despicable situations for the wanton self-indulgent, to put caregivers in. 

There is a man I know that soaked his liver to the malfunction point, and was granted a transplant, after being sober for a year. He was desperate to live and did what he had to do to secure that transplant liver, and behold, he got what he wanted, and in the mean time, he was lovingly cared for by his long-term live-in girlfriend. She told him she would leave if he started drinking again; old friends told him that if he misused this opportunity and abused the new body part that could have gone to a more deserving person, they would drop him as a friend. 

Can you guess what he is doing now, dear reader? That 26 year old liver he received, is being soaked with alcohol, and it is utterly, shameful of him to do what he does, without regard to his duty as an accountable adult. 

Drunks don't care who they hurt, dear one. A person that overindulges eventually becomes a dependent, needing constant care and attention to maintain a useless helpless life. The injuries they inflicted run deep, and without regret, remorse, and a desire to make amends, the drunk leaves scars on their caregivers that can only heal with the helping hand of God Almighty. 

Which brings us full circle to the point of this writing: drunks, druggies, self-absorbed people that care not for others in their insensible states of ignorance, that sleep when danger is present, that get intoxicated or high when they ought to be on duty, ignore mindlessly, that there is another world, and that they are accountable to the One that made them. 

We are all responsible for our impact, and a day of accountability will be faced by one and all because we are answerable to the Judge: this is precisely what Christians discern and know, and what heathens and pagans deny as they indulge their flesh. We all have many eyes upon us, and it behooves us to behave with peculiar propriety, especially if we call ourselves Christians. 

I leave you with scripture to consider: 

1 Thessalonians 5:6-10

Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.