A father wanted to read a magazine but was being bothered by his little girl, Shelby. She wanted to know what the United States looked like.
Finally, he tore a sheet out of his new magazine on which was printed the map of the country. Tearing it into small pieces, he gave it to Shelby, and said, “Go into the other room and see if you can put this together. This will show you our whole country today.”
After a few minutes, Shelby returned and handed him the map correctly fitted together. The father was surprised and asked how she had finished so quickly. “Oh,” she said, “on the other side of the paper is a picture of Jesus. When I got all of Jesus back where He belonged, then our country just came together.”
This one is worthy of forwarding…
Several points on this story. First, it is fictitious. That is not so bad, but manufacturing a story to get a message of godly truth across is not so good, particularly when we go to the next point. It speaks of a picture of Jesus. A picture of Jesus or of anything in the context of worship is a transgression of the second commandment. Pictures men paint not only fall short of the truth, but are a mockery of it. They are misrepresentations of God. Finally, nobody gets the Lord “all back where He belongs.” He is Lord; He runs the show, raises and brings down nations as he pleases, and neither America nor any other country will come together by somebody putting Jesus anywhere.
If America as a nation were to repent, things would go very well, except that it would not be as one would imagine. Whenever people have repented, they were the few, suddenly persecuted by the many who resented their conversion to God. It would be no different with nations. America would suddenly face persecution and hatred in a new way, and it should not surprise anyone if America should be “killed” for righteousness’ sake, if it turned righteous.
“Damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” I can hear it said. America is damned to Heaven if it does not repent, but if it repents, as a nation, it will be damned by the world. The former is bad; the latter is good, because the Lord rewards those who turn to Him. Blessed are they then to Heaven, and He restores all that those who love Him lose, manifold. He is the Resurrection and the Life. Nothing can ever be lost through faith in, and obedience to Him… nothing.