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| We
lost our naiveté very slowly and very gradually. It is becoming progressively
darker spiritually and morally in our society. |
| Photograph by Graham Cooper |
I usually heard my mother call me to come in when we kids were outside during the evening. We were busy playing "king off the mountain" or "red rover" or some such game kids played back in the 50s on a warm summer evening.
We had been pretty noisy and I had not heard her one particular night. When we had finished our playing and all the kids were heading home, I lumbered into the house. "I called several times and you didn't respond", my mother said. "You know you are supposed to come in when it begins to get dark." "But, Mom", I reasoned, "it's still pretty light." She took me to the window and I looked out into the darkening neighborhood. "But when I was outside it looked light." She explained that being outside, your eyes become adjusted to the gradual diminishing of the light and you do not realize how dark it has become.
Recently that old memory came to my mind as I was considering the times we live in and the gradual erosion of our morality. I thought of the days of "I Love Lucy" and "Ozzie and Harriet" on television (and not as re-runs). In those days Rhett Butler's slight profanity in "Gone With the Wind" was a shock. Girls wore clothes that were modest and boys were careful about what they talked about around girls. Neither were politician's indiscretions discussed in detail by the media. We would have been embarrassed to have been exposed to the things to which we now don't give a second thought. You may call it dull, or naive, or boring, but to us at that time it was not boring or dull at all.
We lost our naiveté very slowly and very gradually. It is becoming progressively darker spiritually and morally in our society. The Bible prophesies that the times will become darker and darker before Christ's sudden return. It will be as it was before God sent the flood as His judgment upon the earth. The signs of the times are everywhere. Jesus said, "Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door." Mark 13:29
Have your eyes become adjusted to the descending darkness and you think it is still light? Perhaps you have never come in to the light of Christ, or maybe you have just gotten slack and have let the darkness slowly creep into your life which was once filled with His light.
As my mother's voice was calling to me, there is a still small voice calling you. There may be so many other voices vying for your attention that you cannot hear it. The voice is calling your own name and asking you to come out of the darkness and into the warmth and safety of His light now before it is eternally too late.
Copyright Daphne Harrington1999