Because He Has No Dawn

The drunk man on the street strove up to me and I could see and smell that once again the rum had taken its toll. He began with the usual belligerence, flailing his arms, yelling, pelting his stomach and telling me he was dying of hunger. I asked him to solve for me a riddle, how is it that he is every day so hungry, and yet every day so drunk? He again smacked his stomach and rained down curses. 

He drinks the alcohol and feels good, but he doesn't see that it's eating away at his stomach and his mind, and the truth is, it's really Satan that is having the feast. "I will pray to Satan and ask him to cut my mouth so I cannot drink the alcohol!" He raved.
"You can if you want to, but you don't need to. God has more power and more authority. Instead of asking Satan to cut you, ask God to make Satan shut up. Instead of asking Satan to hurt you, ask God to save you." I said. 
The few times I've seen this man when he is sober, he is kind and gentle, though sad and discouraged. I know God wants him. He wants all of us. But how many of us are slaves to the lie that the Way Everlasting simply cannot be?
Why would a prisoner, fastened in chains, ask Satan to cut off his hands and feet to make him free, when God could make the chains to simply fall away?
This morning we dug into our Bibles and there was the answer, so sad and yet so filled with truth: 
"To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. " Isaiah 8:20.
Such a discouraging thought to crush the heart and break the bones. The old man hurts this way, he shakes his fist at God, he complains and yells and stomps his feet...because he has no dawn. 
Satan has within his clever scheming devised such a veil as to cloak our hearts from the shining noon day Sun! That cover is our own evil desires, and we wontingly chase after them until one day we realize we've ourselves been chased away. 

Can you imagine? Not to wake and see the light of a new day...dawning? The color of discouraged blackness transformed into hope, colors of purple and violet, red and gold. 
No warmth to chase the chill from the very marrow of our souls. No zeal for something fresh. No basking in the glorious.  Not this day, not ever...

Can you hear the charge?  The trumpet blast? To the teaching and to the testimony!There IS a dawn! It's more beautiful than any eye can behold. It's coming, charging, in an unrelenting breaking forth, consuming the cold, dark night of every soul that is lost unto itself and cannot find its way. The colors splash onto the page of every heart in crimson words that cannot be washed away....
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
How did the old man receive my words?
I asked him to give up his alcohol for three weeks, not just for one day because any fool can do that, but for three weeks to save his money and follow the Lord.  Then I asked him to come back to see me at the end of that time and tell me if he is still hungry.
He called down curses and walked away, totally disgusted with the very idea of me and our conversation, but mostly just disgusted with God.
It's not up to me.  I can't make him see the dawn, even though I know it's there.  France is there.  How many of us know that but will never set foot upon her shores?  'No man comes to the Father except through Me'.