Ignoring God is pure ignorance

"Don’t be misled; remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows! If he sows to please his own wrong desires, he will be planting seeds of evil and he will surely reap a harvest of spiritual decay and death; but if he plants the good things of the Spirit, he will reap the everlasting life that the Holy Spirit gives him." Galatians 6:7-8 TLB

The sky this morning is so dark it could easily be night. The cold rain splays on concrete like blood from a particularly deep arterial spray. 

It is cold, and it will be getting colder all day into the depth of winter night.

It is the kind of day that it would behoove us to simply pull the cover back over our heads, hunker down, and sleep the rest of the morning

And yet. And yet. God is good. We, understanding that we can't ignore our good God, have the ability to plant good things of the Holy Spirit, and we will reap the everlasting life that the Holy Spirit gives him. Isn't that a wonderful shaping of the text?

Let me give you a wonderful telling of a story from portions of Psalm 78.

"But their greed knew no bounds; they stuffed their mouths with more and more. Finally God was fed up, his anger erupted -- he cut down down their brightest and best, he laid low Israel's finest young me.

"And -- can you believe it? -- they kept right on sinning; all those wonders and they still wouldn't believe!

"So their lives dribbled off to nothing -- nothing to show for their lives but a ghost town. When he cut them down, they came running for help; they turned and pled for mercy. They gave witness that God was their rock, that High God was their redeemer, but they didn't mean a word of it; they lied through their teeth the whole time.

"They could not have cared less about him, wanted nothing to do with his Covenant. And God? Compassionate! Forgave their win! Didn't destroy! Over and over he reined in his anger, restrained his considerable wrath."

It is cold. It will be getting colder. It will be wet (100 percent forecast). It will be a miserable day.

But through it all, God will offer mercy and love, grace and forgiveness. So, no matter what falls, God will be there holding the umbrella. No matter what goes wrong, God will be there pointing toward the right.

The only thing that can possibly go wrong for us is if we ignore the umbrella, ignore the offer of the overcoat, ignore the bright light of mercy.

That's ignore-ance in its purest form.