Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

When I was growing up, air conditioning was not even a consideration for us; we simply dealt with the heat. If my mother knew some of my methods for coping under those conditions I would have been in a bunch of trouble—like opening the refrigerator and sticking my head inside for a minute to get some relief, and wiping my sweaty face on her clean towels on the clothesline because the cool moisture was quite soothing!

Another gadget that has made life easier for many of us is the automatic dishwasher. That, too, was unheard of in our house until more recent times but now it is a convenience in our fast paced way of living that it is hard to do without. But with the convenience there is always a price and dishwashers do two things: they wash dishes and they break. And ours broke last week—or at least it appeared to be broken.

When it started to give trouble, I decided to see if I could solve the problem myself. It would start just fine but would shut off well before the cycle was finished. I remembered reading that a dishwasher could be reset by cutting the power for a few minutes, but after several attempts that did not do any good. After doing a little backtracking, it appeared that it was not draining properly. The drain pump seemed to be performing so I decided to disconnect the drain line to see if there was an issue with it. In so doing, I discovered a piece of a Brazil nut shell lodged in the line with some accumulated material attached to it. I cleaned out the blockage and the machine worked like a new one.

I knew there was a problem with the dishwasher, I simply needed to work backwards until I found the source of the malfunction. I did not only find the problem, I corrected it. As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s birthday, it is a joyous time to remember our freedom and the abundance that we partake of. Yet when we stop and survey the moral decline and the spreading of godlessness throughout the land, it is also a time of sadness.

If we backtracked in search of the source of our problems, I am convinced that one of the most notable things we would discover in America is the neglect of the Word of God as our source of guidance. When God’s Word is neglected, the door is flung open to invite all kinds of evil in and accepting the notion that there are no absolutes in life. Yet when we look into God’s Word we quickly find that there are absolutes prescribed by God Himself; there are things that are right that we should incorporate into our daily lives, and there are things that are absolutely wrong that we should always eliminate from our lives.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, during the time of King Josiah, the account is recorded of the cleansing and repairing of the Temple of God. During the work, the Book of the Law was discovered—the Word of God. Much sin had invaded the land and the Word of God had been neglected, but when it was found the king was moved with sorrow because of sin and he directed the people back to a fresh commitment to God and His Word. 2 Chronicles 34:31 tells us that “The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep His commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book” (New International Version).

The nation had a problem, the source of the problem was discovered and the king and the people responded to the answer to the problem—they followed the Word of God. The result was a time of spiritual renewal across the land. That is exactly what needs to take place in our great nation!