“The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it…The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.”
Do you know where that quote hails from? Let me feed you a hint. Chapter 1 of that great book set in the time of the French Revolution begins like this, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Do you know it now? Grasp you the author?! Yes, A Tale of Two Cities and Charles Dickens.
The above quote comes from the 2nd chapter where passengers and horses and laboring with the Dover mail up a muddy hill. Finally, after they make it note what the guard does. He skids the wheel for the descent. That, my friend, is a brake; the guard skids the wheel to keep the mail coach from descending pell-mell to break in a heap.
God skids our wheels
In Romans 1, Paul piles up a single phrase: “God gave them up… (ESV)” or “God gave them over…(NIV)”. He uses it three times and I have pulled them together below.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts…26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions…28…God gave them up to a debased mind…(bits and pieces of Romans 1:24,26,28–ESV)
Other things are listed in these three verses: lusts of the heart, dishonorable passions, and a corrupted mind. Those are the things God gave people up to. People did not always have these problems; they entered when Adam and Eve decided to play fruit-munch. That first couple figured out that bit about clothes and being naked, but that was easily remedied. They also were evicted from Eden, received death-dates, field-thistles, and painful childbirth. Firstborn crop-man-Cain became jealous of his able-shepherd brother when God did not pat him on the back for breaking worship rules. Jealousy grew up, Cain smashed Abel, and murder-one was on the books.
Don’t forget that before Abel was taken to the fields and killed God came to Cain with a warning and an invitation. God, foreseeing the end-game of jealousy tried to forestall it. God, so to speak, put the brakes on Cain so Cain would not break Abel and in so doing further break himself.
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