Last night I dreamed a horrible dream.  It has haunted me to the point where I can no longer delay sharing it.  Understand that I am not a prophet, nor do I claim to have the biblical gift of prophecy.  But…this is my dream.

I was in my own town.  Familiar streets and places.  Yet I was very far away.  It seemed like evening, but I couldn’t really tell. The sky was dark, but not black.  More of a strange gray greenish color.

As I walked around, I was surrounded by violence—and its evidence.  Broken things.  Broken relationships.  People using profanity to the point where printable language was merely the mortar between the bricks of their vulgar expressions.  

I heard people plotting vengeance…making violent plans.  My own life was threatened.  Though I hurried to leave, my shoes were mired in a landscape of brown ooze with a gripping power far greater than common mud.

When home at last, I shared the scene with my wife.  And one of us—I’m not sure who—quietly assessed, “This is the hand of God removed.” 

And then I woke up, deeply stirred by the dream.  I’m not suggesting that this is “a vision for all mankind.”  Yet it does seem like a reliable picture of what a society becomes with the hand of God removed.  Consider America:

• The debauchery that increasingly defines our sexual norms—it’s the hand of God removed.

• The ignorance and arrogance of our scientific community—worshipping the “natural” while deploring any worship of the God of the supernatural—it’s the hand of God removed.

• The rise of corporate greed and treachery toward human beings—it’s the hand of God removed.

• The move away from our historical support of Israel—it’s the hand of God removed.

Could it be those gray green skies I saw in my dream are something of a forecast for a nation unaware?   The hand of God removed….