Jared is now working in Vegas FULL - TIME! (Something we said we would never do :) funny how life does that to you)! When we first moved to the valley, we counted our blessings that ..."at least we don't live in Vegas!" However, the years have softened us. Actually most of the softening has come from getting to know people that live in Vegas! We love them! Oh, that and Smart and Final (my favorite store) and Business Costco! Those definitley help :) All kidding aside, it is the people!
And yet, it is those people that I have the most admiration for. The SMOKE and MIRRORS, LIGHTS and SOUNDS of Las Vegas have never tricked me. A city built upon the lures of pornography, gambling, sex, drinking....pretty much everything that would destroy a family! And yet, these people have stalwart families! My whole heart goes out to them! It is them that I find myself asking my "how to raise your kids" questions!
BUT every once in a while, the UGLY stands out, and I have to step back and think. ON Monday Jared came home and said, "Kathryn, I just keep noticing that everyone walking the streets of Vegas is carrying a stick of some kind..and today, I saw a lady CARRYING A FULL ON BAT!" So three days later, as I drove myself down Craig and Nellis, I also noticed plenty of STICKS, no bats, but lots of sticks! And I thought to myself, when the roots are corrupt, EVERYTHING follows! You cannot hide the results of sin, even with 9 foot walls and pretty decorative turtules. It seeps out into EVERYTHING.
Remember how I am reading that large book about Abraham Lincoln (which I am loving...except when the author slipped in her personal opinion and ruined an entire chapter for me) however, that aside, there is a chapter of the book when one of the political cantidates goes and visits the SOUTH, when slavery was alive and well. His description was a timely reminder for me of what we were seeing on the streets of Vegas....
"The North of this period "teemed with bustling, restless men and women who believed passionately in 'progress' and equated it with growth and change; the air was filled with the excitement of intellectual ferment and with the schemes of enterpereneurs; and the land was honeycombed with societies aiming at nothing less than the total reform of mankind."
Yet crossing into Virginia, the Sewards entered a world virtually unchanged since 1800. "We no longer passed frequent farm-houses, taverns, and shops...but our rough road conducted us...past low log-huts, the habitations of slaves...a waste, broken tract of land, with here and there an old, decaying habitation..How deeply the cursse of slavery is set upon this venerated and storied region of the old dominion."
I fear we are trying to "Grow, Progress, and Change" with sin as our motivator...How many times will histories of civiliations have to repeat itself to know that IT CANNOT HAPPEN. Goodness creates Growth. Christ allows Progress, and Repentance will be the only thing to change us.
And these are where my grand thoughts end for the day....there are remnants of crepe batter calling my name :)
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