Are You Entombed?

Are You Entombed?

A clergy colleague of mine recently shared an insightful experience he had when waiting to be seated for dinner at Red Lobster.  True to the restaurant’s name, each store has a large tank of lobster in the entrance to entice customers to purchase the main staple for their entrees.  While waiting, my colleague observed a strange and unusual phenomenon in the tank.  One of the lobsters look emaciated as it did not have a shell.  He thought its lack of a hard cover meant the shell fish was defective and thus should be removed from the tank.  Upon being summoned, the host came to explain this odd lobster.  Actually, there is nothing irregular about that lobster’s temporary lack of a shell as the lobster necessarily sheds its shell to regenerate another one.  The host explained that each lobster must shed his original shell at least once.  If he fails to do so, the primary shell becomes a tomb as its toxins poison the lobster internally and he dies. 

Pastors look for sermons in everyday practical experiences which supply gut-level wisdom.  The lobster’s original shell and its potential to entomb and kill the lobster is a metaphor for fear and its deadly possibilities.  Mischievously and dastardly, fear enters the mind and imprisons a person’s dreams and hopes.  This impostor convinces anyone who listens of his many “reasons” why his ambitions will never materialize.  As a person internalizes negative thoughts, he convinces himself of the futility of pursuing his heart’s deepest desires.  Inevitably, fear seeps from the mind into the heart where it sentences a person to lifetime imprisonment. 

In the fourteenth chapter of the book of Numbers, Joshua, Caleb and ten other scouts conduct a reconnaissance mission into the Promised Land.  They stealthily examine the terrain, produce, livestock, people and possibilities of the land which God swore to them as an inheritance.  The scouts favorably characterize the land as “flowing with milk and honey” meaning it is fertile yielding bountiful harvest and sustaining a prosperous and flourishing lifestyle for its inhabitants.  However, ten of the scouts conclude that the people who currently dwell in the land appear as giants and the Israelites equate with grasshoppers in their own eyes.  These scouts are afraid to invade the Promised Land and take their inheritance.  In contrast, Joshua and Caleb steadfastly trust in the Lord’s promises to empower them to take possession of the land.  The other ten scouts surrender to their heartfelt fear and refuse to believe they can defeat the giants.  Remarkably, they spread their fear throughout the camp.  Incredibly, the fear of ten men eventually poisons the minds and hearts of an entire generation who internalize it and refuse to believe God is able to deliver His promise.  Ten men’s fear entombs six hundred and ten thousand (610,000) men’s souls not counting women and children.  The generation of Israelites who left Egypt after the Exodus wanders in the wilderness for forty years as they died out. 

Similarly, you and I often live with pervasive fear.  In a twisted irony, we are afraid to confront our fears.  So, we compromise with or surrender to it.  With each concession, we irreversibly entomb ourselves to the slow and humiliating existential death that our lives become as we forego pursuing our heart’s deepest desires.  As an admission counselor at a graduate school of education, I interviewed a banker who had just lost her job in a major merger.  Previously, she survived multiple mergers; this time, she was amongst the first group of employees to be offered a severance package.  After receiving the document, she calmly and politely thanked her supervisors.  She then left the room to arrange the appointment resulting in our conversation.  She shared with me that she wanted desperately to leave banking for a decade or more.  Simply, she could not pull herself away from the money.  Losing her job in the merger became a tremendous blessing for her as she resolved God did for her what she could not do for herself.  Her heart was full of passion for English literature.  Her mind was enflamed with a desire to share its riches with high school students by opening their minds and hearts to the lessons and joys of great books.  Reflecting upon the experience, she realized she had entombed herself for a decade or more to mammon, bourgeois expectations and social mores of the cultural and financial elite.

Have you allowed fear to imprison you to an unproductive job?  Are you living on a dead end street with a scenic view adjacent to a land fill?  Relationally, are you permitting your spouse or significant other to take you for granted?  Are there at least a hand full of slow burning embers left to rekindle your love and passion?  Have you become a slave to debt and bill collectors?  Affirmative replies to any of these questions ideally qualify you for God’s power.  His strength is made perfect in your weakness.  Like the banker, God will do for you what you cannot do for yourself and more.  He is not a respecter of persons.  He has not given fear to anyone.  On the contrary, He imparts unfailing love, spiritual power and practical and pragmatic benefits of reason and wisdom.  If you are entombed, call upon Almighty God and allow Him to recall you to life.