I once sold insurance door-to-door in low-income areas of Louisiana.
One of my clients was a poor family who lived in a run-down part of town. Every month I would meet them in their home to collect their insurance money. Afterwards, we would sit and talk. One day I noticed that the clock was wrong. It said nine o’clock when, in fact, it was noon. Finally, I mentioned it to the husband and wife. Tears came to their eyes. ‘That was the moment our boy died ten years ago’, the husband whispered as he held his sobbing wife. I looked away at the clock once again, and understood. The clock had stopped in their lives at the moment they lost their boy.
Stopping the clock
The pain of friendly fire can stop the clock. When wounded by a friend in our own house, it is hard to go on. There is no pain like it. This happens to Christians who are hurt by other Christians and who fail to identify their pain with Christ. The clock stops. They go through life, month after month, year after year, and often church after church, but in many cases the clock stopped in their lives years ago, when they were hurt. They were disillusioned. They were heartbroken. They would never be the same again.
