Who Needs Horoscopes?
IT IS LATE afternoon of a Midwest winter's day. I write in growing darkness, surrounded and oppressed, at least aware that I can hardly see the tablet in my house.
Cold night settles round the house and flows into my room. I am part of it, my work must soon end because of dark.
I put my pen down on the raised hearth beside my chair, get up and turn on the light.
There is relief in knowing that I need not stay in winter's dark, that I can by that small act of mine be surrounded with warm brightness.
The outside dark still grows. But in my house, my room, I choose the light.
Our days are winter's twilight of a century long darkening. Four wars, the destroyer Hitler, a bomb from hell have brought their dark. Witches gather, men marvel, "What hath Satan wrought."
I feel the colding dark. I cannot light the closing of a century, but I can bring bright light to my small room. I need not settle for darkening twilight's coming night.
You share my choice, we have it because we're men and God's God.
"I am the light of the world," Jesus said. "The man or woman who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
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Satan and witches, hell, demons and ignorance, bondage, dread fear, horoscopes even and Ouija boards, are creatures of the night.
But I need not choose them. I need not fear them.
I can turn on the light in my small room. I can choose the Light of the World.
The switch that brings this light to me is faith, faith that God, by Jesus Christ, can light my dark world. The more helpless I feel at overcoming the darkness, the more likely I am to turn the switch.
And what about the future? Must I listen to Jeane Dixon or some dark medium interpret the pale flicker of distant stars? Is this the light I want?
No; I want God, Creator of stars and constellations and earth and me. But not merely Creator.
"You have a Father," Jesus said. "Your Father made the stars and rules their courses. But He isn't just interested in light years, in distant universes. He's concerned about the very smallest creature, a sparrow that falls to earth in winter.
"If God sees the sparrow, does He not see you? He does, he even knows the number of hairs on your head. Nothing about you is insignificant to your Father.
"So give your attention to God and His kingdom, His righteousness, and He'll take care of the rest. Trust your Father and you'll not need astrologers and sorcerers and Ouija boards."
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah (8:19) saw this: "And when they say to you, 'Consult the mediums and the wizards who chirp and mutter,' should not
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a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?"
Who needs horoscopes, seances that raise the dead to strange, halting utterances? Those who have no faith in a living God, who have not yet discovered that there's a switch of faith to turn, that they have a Father who wants to flood their lives with light.
"To the teaching and to the testimony! Surely for this word which they speak there is no dawn. They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry; and when they are hungry; they will be enraged and will curse their king and their God,and turn their faces upward; and they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.' (Isaiah 8, R.S.V.)
The more dark the country around becomes, the more we need our bright room.
This is no time to turn off the lights.
