The renovation of our building has picked up again.  We have done the demo part.  We are now in the “building walls” part of our responsibility.  If you are new to this blog, or have not yet taken the time to look, you can go here to see the demo part of our construction. I hope to have some pictures of what we are currently doing on the site soon.  I spent a good part of the day running to Lowe’s (morning) with the young man who has taken charge of building the walls; helping tear out slices of carpet where the walls will go;  buying lunch 🙂 ; moving deck chairs on Titanic (seemingly moving things from one place to another only to have to move them again); to running errands; to standing around chewing the fat (what I do best).  Among other things, that means I am late posting.  I gave some serious thought to not even doing so today, but then I read something during my Bible reading that struck me.

When I went away to Bible college in 1970 (yeah, I know, a looooooooong time ago), I was fairly “worldly.”   Translated that means I listened to “secular” rock music.  But one of the bad things about going away like I did was that it is easy to be influenced by the more radical ideas of a “closed” religious mindset.   It wasn’t too long before I began hearing how evil rock music was.  I chose to ignore it, but by the time I was a sophomore, the pitch has heightened.  My roommate decided to take all his records (Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Chicago, Bloodrock, Zep, and even John Denver) and pitch them into the abyss (down over the hill).  They made great flying saucers.   I also remember news reports of churches having record burnings where the teens would bring their records to the church building and put them into a big pile and burn them.   I refused to burn my records (vinyl) and wish they had not been stolen because I could have made a mint selling them today.   🙂   The problem is that on a pretty isolated campus that sort of rhetoric can reach a fever pitch that takes over.   My roommate caved.  Funny part: he later went out and bought about all the ones he threw away.  🙂

This morning I read this passage.  Made me think of my college days of record flying.  I don’t think the modern day “book burning” and censorship can be compared to this.  This scene is the result of conversion, and then of those who practiced magic arts making a clean break of their past.   They were making a statement of separation.  Clearly an indication of “getting rid of the old.”   Many people  want to say, “I am a Christ-follower now,” but without the break that is needed.  They want to hold on to vestiges of their past life.  Maybe it is time we burned some “bridges” to our past…and I’m talking about more than books.

Any thoughts?  What do you think of book burnings?  Did you ever experience a time when you burned/threw away things?