For The Sake Of Just One

[Jeremiah 5]

The ancient city has filled her cup. Vice runs down the streets like sewage, and the dishonor is enough. Love will mercifully let her go in a storm of raining fire. And her ashes may never be positively identified. Such is the lot of Sodom.

One man stumbles out though, one man and two daughters, themselves tainted by the derangement of the place. The wife they leave just outside the city, a saline statue perfect in detail, with the longing eyes of a woman torn from her treasures.

More amazing to me than the epic destruction though, is the fact that God would have saved the city, if He could have found nine more men. Just nine.

And more amazing yet; that as history progresses, so grows His mercy.

Ten men would have saved Sodom. A booming metropolis wreaking with vice. I don’t know how many people lived there, but I know this: 10 men would have been the remnant of the remnant.

But run through the crowded streets of Jerusalem, generations later. “The joy of the whole earth,” where vice runs in the gutters, and children are offered as sacrifices to the gods, and incense burns, and chants are heard, and all is iniquity. All that should be music to the ears of God is turned to blasphemy.

"Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof,

if ye can find a man, 

if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth;
and I will pardon it"

Never underestimate what Divinity will do for the sake of just one.