Isaiah 55:6 (NLT)
6 Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now
while he is near.
Let them pray, and their prayers shall be heard and
answered: "Seek the Lord while he may be found. Seek him whom you have
left by revolting from your allegiance to him and whom you have lost by
provoking him to withdraw his favour from you. Call upon him now while he is
near, and within call.' [Matthew Henry Commentary]
Psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Grosz points to research that
shows we usually don't respond when a fire alarm rings. Instead, of leaving the
building immediately, we stand around and wait for more clues. But then even
with more information, we still won't make a move—and sometimes that proves
deadly. For instance, in 1985, 56 people were killed when a fire broke out in the
stands of a soccer match in England. Close examination of television footage
later showed that fans did not react immediately and continued to watch both
the fire and the game, failing to move towards the exits.
Research has also shown that when we do move, we follow
old habits. We don't trust emergency exits. We almost always try to exit a room
through the same door we entered. After a fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club
in Kentucky left 177 people dead, forensic experts confirmed that many of the victims
sought to pay before leaving, and so died in a queue.
Grosz concludes:
After 25 years as a psychoanalyst, I can't say that this
surprises me. We resist change. Committing ourselves to a small change, even
one that is unmistakably in our best interest, is often more frightening than
ignoring a dangerous situation. We don't want an exit if we don't know exactly
where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency … We
want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one. [Stephen
Grosz, The Examined Life (W.W Norton & Company, 2013), pp. 122-123]
Don’t resist the one who is calling you, for God is calling you
to come close and leave sin behind.
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