IN AN HOUR YOU THINK NOT

When teaching a particularly involved or detailed subject in Bible school, I remember times when it seemed the class had just tuned out. Eyes had drooped shut or glazed over. Minds had meandered to milder meadows. Some students were trying to appear interested, but their blank stares betrayed them. I would stop lecturing and announce with a raised voice of alarm: “Jesus is about to come right now!” Some industrious student who had been making a Herculean effort to listen would raise his hand and incredulously inquire, “How can you know that?” I’d answer, “Because Jesus said He was coming in an hour when ‘ye think not,’ and nobody’s doing any thinking.” Of course, I was making a pun with different uses of the word “think.” Jesus used “think” to refer to one’s opinion, judgment, estimation. He was saying, I will come again when in the unprepared’s opinion, judgment, estimation, I wouldn’t. I employed “think” to reference the students’ using their brains to engage the material, using their cognitive abilities to reflect and reason. Arguably, there is a strong case that in our society people simply can’t be thinking. The things they say and do defy reason, logic, and common sense. But, there is another usage of “think.” Think also means to regard or to consider. In this sense, people are no longer thinking. They are not thinking of God. Thoughts of God are congenitally native to humanity. The human psyche must be programmed, suppressed, conditioned not to think of God. To a large degree societal institutional education, media, pop philosophy, etc., has been successful; the innate is overridden; the indoctrination has kicked in. People no longer think of God. Our society’s degradation not only reveals people aren’t thinking, it reveals people aren’t thinking about God. Can’t be. They wouldn’t be doing what they do, believing what they believe, saying what they say. A narcissistic, navel-gazing society has no thought of God. Psalm 10:4 keeps surfacing in my musing: “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” Literally translated the last of that verse reads, “all his thoughts, no God.” Probably, this is noting of the wicked that running through all his thoughts is “There is no God” (to judge his wickedness). A contemporary psalmist might say, “In all the wicked’s thoughts there is no thought of God.” God is simply not a factor in his thinking process. God doesn’t enter his mind. To think there is no God is bad. But, to simply not think of God is worse. People can’t be thinking of God. It shows: Folks live their lives with no thought of God; make decisions with no thought of God; produce movies with no thought of God; write books with no thought of God; scheme and carry out political machinations with no thought of God. Have you ever asked someone after he did a rather silly disastrous thing, “Why,” and that one answers, “I wasn’t thinking.” You respond, “That’s for sure.” Our society isn’t thinking. That’s for sure. It’s not thinking of God. One of the shocks to our egos is to have been bothered by assuming folks had been thinking badly of us only to realize, not only were they not thinking badly of us, they weren’t thinking of us at all. We are past folks thinking badly about God. They simply don’t think of God at all. One of the wonders and mercies of God is simply this “You may not think of God, but He thinks of you. When I was a teen there was a popular song: “When He was on the cross, I was on His mind.” He thought of me. The least I could do is to think of Him. Whatever we take “think” to mean, I maintain Jesus is about to come. People think not and are not thinking. What do you think about that? Remember, Jesus is coming in an hour you think not.

IN AN HOUR YOU THINK NOT

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