Ezekiel saw the wheel, with a cute little hamster running in it . . .

I saw a news item the other day about a theme hotel where one can go and live the life of a hamster. Guests receive a hamster uniform, drink water out of a little plastic tube hanging from the wire walls of the cage, eat from a little trough, and play on a little hamster playground including the ever-popular hamster running wheel. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/france/centralfrance/6589449/French-hamster-hotel-lets-guests-live-like-rodents.html

Those wheels always disturbed me. In a caged hamster universe the wheel becomes more than recreation. It appears to become the hamster's raison d'etre. The successful hamster gets on the wheel and churns away on his cute little hamster feet. I wonder if he ever wonders why he never seems to get anywhere. Maybe he just never knew any different. Neither did his parents, or their parents. Hamsters have run on the little wheel for hundreds of generations.

Kind of like a couple of things we humans have been doing for generations.

War, for instance. What is it good for, after all? (Reference Edwin Starr http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7V6FAoTLc )

A war may have an end. But War does not, or at least it will not until some good and brave people are willing to risk another way. Because winning a war has nothing to do with what is right and good. In war might makes right. The violence may end for awhile, as long as the victor can oppress the vanquished. But so far in human history, the oppressor cannot hold on. Inevitably the weak rise up, re-arm and re-load, and the wheel just keeps on spinning.

And when we step off for a moment, we realize we've gotten nowhere.

No war? A ridiculous, naive notion, I know. Only an idiot would suggest that there is another way. It's always been this way.

What fool would suggest that we shouldn't fight back? Or that we should give away what we have to an enemy who asks for it? That we should put away the sword? That we should love our enemy? That the way to be first is to become last?

Come on, you know. Surely you've heard about Him as you've wandered through the malls the past few days.

Time to get off the wheel and follow Him.

Now we're getting somewhere.

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