Bibledoorajar is drawn to thoughts of purity

     Yesterday was a wonderful day of fellowship and celebration of our nation's freedom. Late at night, as I watched a fireworks display from a dear family's boat on the waters of Lake Martin, I was reminded of our pledge of allegiance. As I recited it again in my mind, declaring my devotion to my country, I thought of those who wish to take out the phrase "under God" from the pledge.  The challenge to keep this aspect of one's devotion is ever the same. God called to Israel to be His and His alone, maintaining a spiritual purity. But alas, the prophets let us know that they dropped "under God" from their vocabulary and actively pursued false gods. In doing so they became unappealing to Him for they had dropped the most precious privilege--to be taught by God and to have a relationship with Him.
   As our story of the country girl and the king is drawing to a close, we find her protesting that she will not drop her allegiance to the king. The light and love that He has imparted has reached her heart. Unlike her country as a whole, she is willing to "board up" her heart with boards of cedar(Song of Solomon 8). This is surely a test for all of us--has all of the knowledge we have been taught of divine things reached our hearts and affected its' loyalty? The apostle Paul writes in 2 Cor. 4:6: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Our beginning vineyard was not kept very well, but now we are like the country girl. We are so affected that we seek to prune and clean our vineyard for Him. The Spirit has elevated us to a higher plane and we are now better able to evaluate much of the silliness and vanity of the world. We place "cedar planks" around our heart to protect it from "this present world" and behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus so that we may be "changed into the same image, from glory to glory as by the Spirit of God." So here is our challenge, as we ponder our independence from the world, are we allowing spiritual fireworks to illumine our lives and to regulate our lives? Oh, Holy One keep shining in our hearts!