It’s the Pitch of the Tent

–May of 2002

It’s the Pitch of the Tent

“And Lot…pitched his tent toward Sodom.”

We are all in a constant state of movement.  Ask any parent and they will tell you their tumbling little toddler is running rapidly toward becoming a towering adult.  Ask any teacher and they will tell you that the first grader struggling to read small words and add simple figures will someday be reading the classics and doing calculus.  On the other hand, ask the doctor about aging, and he will tell you that we are moving away from strength to weakness, and from life to death.  For the Christian, Paul says we are, “being changed from glory to glory.”  (II Cor. 3:18)

We are all in the process of becoming.  We have moved from what we were and are now moving toward what we shall be.  The troubling thought about this is not that we are moving, but what we are moving toward.  Life refuses to let us be still.  We are either ascending or descending, mounting up or sinking down.

An important question in this process is, “What determines our direction?”  A.W. Tozer said, “We are becoming what we love.  We are to a large degree the sum of our loves and we will of moral necessity grow into the image of what we love most.”

No wonder the greatest commandment in the Bible is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  (Matt. 22:37)  Jesus infers this in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart be also.”  (Matt. 6:21)

You and I are being molded by our affinities and shaped by the things we love.  This is the reason behind Lot’s tragedy.  He held an affinity for the well-watered plains of Jordan and ended up a resident ruler in Sodom.  The closing scene of Lot’s life is a portrait of drunkenness and incest.  How did he get there?  He had his heart set on the wrong thing.

The law of moral affinity will either shape our life into a vessel of honor or else will mold us into something twisted and evil.  Both Jezebel and Judas were at one time pink-cheeked innocent children, but they set their affections on the wrong things and were carried down stream by a moral undertow.  There is no middle ground.  Its not where you are this moment, it is where you’re moving.  It is the “pitch of the tent.”  Just ask Lot!