2 Peter 2:7-8: He Knows How to Rescue

and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—

2 Peter 2:7-8 (NIV)

He Knows How to Rescue

In the fine machining hall the floor gets swept twice a shift and the light is the same at noon as it is at six. The man on the surface grinder checks his part against a gauge block, wipes it down, checks it again. He keeps a rag folded in quarters in his back pocket and refolds it when it gets used.

And if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless. Peter is going through things God has done before, and Lot is one of them, along with Noah and the seven others God protected.

For that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. Lot had picked that land, and Peter calls him righteous anyway, and says the wrongness of the place kept getting into him day after day.

It scares me a little, how much I can get used to. What wore on me in the first month of anything has usually stopped registering by the sixth.

Lot got used to a great deal of it and never got used to all of it. When the angels came for him he lingered, and they took him by the hand and brought him out of the city, and Peter calls that a rescue.

The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. He knows how. By tonight you can say whether anything you saw or heard today still bothered you the way it did when it was new.

In the machining hall the second shift comes on at three. The man at the grinder passes the gauge block to the one taking his place and walks out into a parking lot where the light is entirely different.