1 Samuel 5 recounts the events of God's capture by his enemies. (Well, the Ark of the Covenant, an early example of "God With Us", was captured. God was still doing his thing free and clear outside of our concepts of space and time.) These guys knew how to handle gods. It wasn't their first time around the block. They set up the ark in their trophy room and I'm sure they got their best story together.
Yeah, we hunted this fellow for two days before we got a good look at him. When we finally took the shot it landed a little high, so we had to track him another day and a half before... well, you can see for yourself. We've got him mounted right over here next to Dagon...
But, something happened in this particular case. That trophy just wouldn't behave. The next morning, they looked in the room and found the statue of Dagon lying face down next to the Ark. They set him back up, wondered about adding some braces to the floor and went about their business. The next morning, Dagon was face down again, only this time that face was no longer connected to the body and neither were the hands. Dagon had become a headless, handless, worthless trophy. And things only got worse.
Men in the town got sick. They shipped the ark to another town and the same thing happened there. They moved it along to town number three and it happened again. Finally they got smart and just said, "get this accursed thing out of here," and they sent it back to the Israelites. Unfortunately, many times today we do the same thing.
We consider God just one more thing in our lives and we try to place him alongside so many other important things.
Church is great, as long as it doesn't interfere with football.
I love my Lifegroup, but not when I've already had a busy week.
The bible is great, but not as important as getting that extra hour of sleep.
Love my neighbor, but Jesus never met MY neighbors.
I know prayer is important, but not so important that I should plan out time to do it when I won't fall asleep mid-sentence.
Should we be at all surprised when things in our life fall apart. God deserves and demands to be the centerpiece of everything we do. He's a consuming fire that destroys anything and everything that comes between us. He's jealous of our time, energy and affection.
Is some area of your life falling apart? Could it be because you're holding that area above God?
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