Rats

A perverted experiment was brought to my attention. A scientist, a psychologist, took rats, and placed them into jars of water. And he began to let the rats drown. At the moment of their soon to be drowning, he would pluck them out of the water, and save them.

Then, he'd repeat the experiment. To see if the rats would drown faster, slower. What he found, was that the rats, after having given up after fifteen minutes, would the next time they were in water, swim all the harder. Sometimes up to sixty hours. The reason being that these rats had hope of being saved.

As cruel of an experiment this is, God's grace is a similar hope. We, swimming in the deeps of life, could not go but for ten or fifteen minutes without hope. But, with hope, we will persist even against all odds.

So it is with faith. Those who have been plucked out of the fire, by God's grace, will be the ones who keep on swimming. They will be the ones who endure, and do not succumb to drowning in the sea of forgetfulness.

Why is this? Those of us who have been saved, have been like the Virgins who trimmed our lamps. We endure to the final coming, and the LORD comes, and takes away His bride. He prepares the wedding feast for us, and we are clothed and decked in our bridal ornaments. We hope in the Daughter of Zion--the Holy City of Jerusalem--and though we are besieged, though the Daughter is under assault, though our walls are broken in, and though our city has crumbled and we seem to have lost her... though we are in captivity and chains for seventy years, the hope of retuning is what keeps us from perishing. The hope of Zion, the hope of Heaven, the hope of Christ, our Groom, keeps us going.

ff we are the wise virgins, we keep our lamps trimmed. That is, we keep our lamps lit by the holy fire of God's Spirit, the holy fire of God's love, the holy fire of God's word and wisdom, so our imaginations are pure and undefiled. And we do not perish in His wrath.

We endure, we wait, we do not wake from our sleep, and are without fire or passion. We are awakened, and filled with zeal and hope, and through that we endure. And then we receive the delicate things of our mansions, and we receive the soft raiments, and we receive our blessed hope.

Why? Because God actually saved us from the flood. He did not let us drown. We swam, and He plucked us out of the water. He did not let us sink our heads underneath, but rather plucked us up, and set our feet onto dry ground. Again and again, which leaves us with hope while we swim. And not in anger, or bitterness, or malice, or fury, do we swim, but with hope that the hand of providence will pluck us up out of the mire before we fully tire and drown.