Some Sleep But Not All.

How many Christians or at least conscientious people are hypnotized into the complacency and normality of everyday routines?  Yes, I also am guilty of doing the same things that I often talk about.  When living in Mississippi, I very often would sleep soundly during thunderstorms.  Hurricanes and tornadoes were certainly not far off, but that is an expected and usual phenomenon in that particular location.  Believe me, it sounds crazy, but that develops into an everyday routine, especially when there are so many.  It only gets real when all the windows on the north side of the house break out, and you have to dive under the mattress, pulling it up and over on top of you to keep from being hit by flying debris.  But, that time it was in Laredo, Texas.  Yes, I have been through a tornado and survived to sleep again during thunderstorms.

I also used to doze off to sleep sitting in a chair, while in the middle of my shift at a motel or convenience store, at two or three o´clock in the morning, even though I had been robbed three different times at gunpoint.  That happened in Meridian, Mississippi, but it was not an act of God, it was pure greed and the thought of making a few quick bucks with a gun.  We never kept much money in the register, anyway.  Believe me, it is not an easy feeling, looking at the business end of a 45 automatic turned sideways, or looking directly at the gigantic big-bore holes on the end of a sawed-off shotgun.

I have had to drive through tornadic winds on the way to work, coming from an isolated farm house, with highways surrounded by tall trees.  Many times I had to exit my pickup truck and chop up pine trees that had blocked the highway.  I always kept a double-bladed axe in the truck for that particular purpose, especially during snowy winters or high winds.  You can´t get sleepy driving or lose your attention span in heavy winds in Mississippi or you´ll hit a pine tree stretched across the highway at night, with the wind and rain almost completely obscuring your view.  It is much easier though when you can´t see to go only about five or ten miles an hour, as it is easier to stop when a tree is blocking the highway.

I now still sleep comfortably or at least doze off, during hectic events, like riding a bus filled to over capacity with people on the way to Guadalajara, Mexico from the border of the city.  The bus moves randomly between cars, around other obstacles, and sometimes the bus drivers seem like they are racing each other, down busy streets and avenues.  I really have to hold on tight to the bars provided for the standing passengers, always trying to keep my balance and prevent myself from falling all over other people.  I especially like it when I can get a seat next to the window, and it always still seems that I doze off in the middle of the wild melee of busy traffic.  It takes about an hour just to get to the downtown from the border of the city.  Guadalajara has such busy streets, but the buses are a lot safer than driving or taking taxis.  The big buses are like riding on top of an elephant in the middle of a wild animal stampede.  Nobody messes with the elephant.  I don´t like to drive that much here, because there is so much traffic.  No pine trees here falling across the middle of the highway, but people drive fast, change lanes constantly, and stop suddenly in front of you.  After all, it is a huge beautiful but dangerous metropolis.

There is that one other added thing that I forgot to mention.  There are deep holes called "fosas" or mass graves, along with torture houses, spread all around the seemingly benign and busy city of Guadalajara and surrounding areas, filled with sometimes up to a hundred bodies, some thirty, or forty, and dotted all over the city, and at least thirty plus or minus different locations have been found now.  The bodies of the victims are usually cut up into pieces, put into plastic bags, and dumped like garbage off steep hills or mostly inside, buried under neighborhood rental houses, abandoned lots, or warehouses.  It seems almost every day they discover a new "fosa", mass grave, and torture house.

At least here in Guadalajara almost every house has iron bars on the windows, with metal doors and concrete or metal walls surrounding the entire house, not like in Mississippi with mostly exposed glass, ready for the breaking.  The U.S. architects might want to start copying Mexican house builders.  At least they have safely constructed reinforced concrete block houses that might prevent most intrusions.  In Meridian, Mississippi I had my house broken into and burglarized several times, until I finally put burglar bars on all the windows and installed metal doors, but the last time they broke in and kicked the wood frames off the doors, basically separating the door frame from the wall.  So, we left there after twenty years, because the neighborhood had become so downgraded and dangerous.  They even did drive-by shootings and put bullet holes in the glass windows and wooden walls.  We left without much choice, since the wood construction house had been completely trashed and everything ransacked, leaving no safe door or window to prevent continued multiple burglaries.    

I still sleep very good at night, despite being surrounded by violence here in Mexico, and only occasionally wake up with the dog barking, or the other twenty or thirty dogs in the community all barking in unison.  It seems like everybody here has a barking dog.  We just don´t go out in the middle of the night much, even though there are stores open all night, just like in Mississippi.  But, I rarely went out much at night in Mississippi even then, as it is certainly not safe there either.  The same problems we have in Mexico will eventually visit the U.S. and cause the crime rate to sore exponentially and get so much worse than it already is.  

In the daytime here in Guadalajara we walk seemingly safely almost anywhere; to the park, the stores, all around town full of people everywhere.  We all go about our busy lives, oblivious to the evil and danger all around us.  I´ll bet there are also mass graves in a lot of the U.S. cities that people just don´t even know about.  You´ll soon discover them if not already, due to the condition of a failed state in the U.S. with no real border, no effective crime task force to fight against multiple existing gangs, and a completely corrupt central government as well.  Nobody in the U.S. government ever goes to jail for selling military secrets and technology to the Communist Chinese, receiving bribes from the CCP, extortion, money-laundering, bribery, collusion, or treason, and not registering as a foreign agent.  Some sleep but not all. 

Just to think, we used to play at all hours in the streets of Mississippi under the lights, just a bunch of kids, not worrying about anything at all.  Things sure have changed a lot.  The one thing though that has never changed and that is the love that Jesus Christ has for us.  He will be with us, even until the end of the world.  

.Matthew 28:20

“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-28-20/

1 Thessalonians 5:6

“Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” 

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Thessalonians-5-6/

1 Corinthians 15:51

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,”

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Corinthians-15-51/

1 Corinthians 15:52

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” 

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Corinthians-15-52/

June 8, 2023

Cliff Rhodes Christian Ministry