Hitting the snooze button

   I just spent a few days in southern Indiana visiting my best friend, Steven,  and some other friends. Due to his living room being uses as storage for his sister's furniture, Steven  has his lazy boy recliner in his bedroom. He slept in the chair and I slept in the bed. Every morning I was there the alarm would go off, and he would hit the snooze button....repeatedly. I'd be up and getting ready, and he would still be in his chair hitting the snooze button. I'm not a snooze button hitting kind of guy. For one thing, I'd have to get out of bed to hit the snooze button, and once you get out of bed, you may as well stay up. Also, I usually wake up before the alarm goes off, and get up to avoid having the alarm go off.

    I started reading a book yesterday that was so good, I finished reading it last night, staying up slightly later than I should have. The title of the book is "Priceless", and is based on a movie by the same name coming out in October. The gist of the book: James is a widowed father down on his luck who has just gotten out of jail. A friend hooks him up with a job of driving a box truck with some merchandise several hours to Las Vegas. It turns out the truck has two illegal immigrant sisters from Mexico who are unknowingly going to be forced into the sex trade. James realizes the truth and decides the right thing to do is get the girls back, which is not an easy feat.

   As I closed the book, I was filled with renewed disgust, sorrow, and indignation at the thought of countless boys, girls, and women being sold into this horrible industry where they are used and abused for others' pleasure. I went to bed wishing there was something I could do to fight this terrible thing, and said a prayer for all of those people caught up in being used for the pleasure of evil men. I am still filled with emotion about human trafficking this morning as I write this, but how long before I do what I and so many others do....hit the snooze button.

  We all do it. Something happens that wakes us up or shakes us up. For a while, we concentrate on whatever it is - and may even take measures to change something or change ourselves -  but eventually we hit the snooze button and go back to work.

We are stirred to do something about the millions of babies being killed in the womb, but then go back to being used to it.

We get angry with politicians for not doing their job, but keep voting for the same useless people at election time.

A sermon, song, or something else nudges us to work on our relationship with God more, but then we go back to sleep.

A renewed desire arises to break a habit, but we weary of the struggle and go back to it.

  Over and over, we are confronted with information that stirs us to do more, to be more.....but we rarely put much effort or thought into it, hit the snooze button, and go back to how and what we were before.

  I don't know what I can do to stop human trafficking, or even abortion.....though I only vote for pro-life candidates to try to do something on that....... but I want to stop hitting the snooze button and truly do something when I am stirred about things like human trafficking.....even if it is small, I don't want to be fired up about an issue for a few days, and then forget about it and go back to life as normal. May God help us all to stop hitting the snooze button and wake up.....wake up to what we need to do.