Have you ever noticed how many unsavory words begin with the letter “L”? Lax. Lackadaisical. Lazy. Lewd. Licentious. Lust. ...and the list goes on. Levity is there also. “Lack of serious thought, frivolity” is one dictionary’s definition of the word.

A year ago, my cousin lay dying. He was a follower of Jesus. One of his daughters, also a believer, asked him: “Dad, do you have any last words for us?” “Yes,” he gasped. “Be sober!” Then he lay back and left them. In relating this incident to the funeral audience, she said she and her siblings were perplexed by those words. She said she didn’t think they had any trouble keeping sober in their family! Drinking wasn’t on my mind – I was thinking along another line. This family seemed to laugh a lot. Maybe too much?

My cousin knew what he was doing. His daughter said that her father’s last words got them thinking. I was glad she shared this anecdote with us. It caused some of us to recall words from the Bible such as 1 Thessalonians 5:6, “So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.” Levity is the opposite of being sober in this context. Maybe frivolous earthly cares and desire for things can choke serious thoughts of God from finding root in our hearts? They do in the parable of the Sower and the Seed (Matthew 13). When that happens, we miss God’s purposes. We shrivel within and eventually die, forever unfulfilled and incomplete. Going against God’s will is serious.

In Africa, concern for having good relationships within the local community has often been the glue that kept tribes from falling apart. But in today’s Africa, this concern has given way to a greater concern for things instead of people. Some of the God-given human decency that comes from being created in God’s image is disappearing and the result is devastating. But this isn’t only an African malady – it’s everywhere. In our post-modern culture, materialism gives birth to flippancy. We lose the ability to think seriously of God and others.

Note the sturdy faith of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren’s founding fathers. At the CLB’s inception, they launched a two-pronged program of reaching new converts in the homeland along with reaching the lost in far-flung areas of the world. They established a Bible School simultaneously with sending missionaries to China. The plight of others trumped concern for personal gain. They seemed happy to give away what they knew wasn’t theirs to keep in order to gain what they never wanted to lose: God’s approval.

One of the subtlest deceits of Satan is to get us thinking that it’s best to serve ourselves. When he succeeds, we have levity. We attempt to drive out the unrest within by becoming flippant and frivolous. God has better plans for us: plans to prosper us... when we seek him with all our heart (Jeremiah 29:11,13).

Rev. Donald Raun is a retired LBIM missionary who served with his wife Orpha in Chad, Africa for 40 years. Donald and Orpha now reside in Fergus Falls, MN.

How might Muslims react to their first contacts with Bible truths? For some Muslims, their first contacts with biblical truth are like the dawning of a new day. Daybreak! by Donald Raun is available at www.ffbooks.org.

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