Nevada

I have often said that Nevada would likely be the last state I would choose to live in of the 50 states if given the choice that I must choose to live in any one of the 50 with a gun to my head, and that’s saying something with contenders like California and New Jersey on the list to be considered. Of course, this would be a very odd predicament to find oneself in - that is being forced at threat of death on semi-arbitrary geographic location selection. On the other hand, I suppose that most adults in the U.S. do actually have that choice, within limits, and without the gun. Reality is often at least as strange as fiction. The caricature of Nevada is deserts and casinos; the problem is that stereotypes are partially based on reality. I have been to Nevada - twice - and the caricature is almost as true as the reality…and yes, I said that the right way around. I confess the spectacle of lights immediately faded to the background within moments of arriving in Las Vegas city limits for the first time, and I wish it were because of the lack of banks and the plethora of casinos. It was the extraordinarily intoxicated individual that hadn’t the slightest he was in Nevada, let alone Earth. He was a caricature of the city in a very real way, that is, someone who had been invited to sit at the king’s table of visceral and sensual pleasures, but found out fairly quickly that the king that had invited was not only a tyrant, but a monster, like in Jack and the Beanstalk, and he had been chewed up, digested in the stomach acid, begun to descend into the small intestine, but was vomited back out. This metaphor has multiple layers. But amidst the sparkling veneer that hides a much darker underbelly, there are glimmers of hope; more on this in a minute. My second visit to Nevada was about a year later on the west side, coming into Carson City and up into Reno, both of which are smaller and sadder capitulations of Vegas in many ways and both of which are set amidst the desert. However, just over the mountains west of the capital is a lake that has the most pristine water I have seen, and water fresh from the melted mountain snow feeds the immaculate Lake Tahoe. Almost like a massive oasis in a more gargantuan desert; come to think of it, exactly like it. Amidst the unbearable heat and scorching sand is a gigantic refreshing spring of cool life-giving water. A genuinely different climate, elevation, habitat, and culture exists around Lake Tahoe compared to the rest of the state. The same could be said of the oasis that is the local church amidst all of the glitz and glam of the dazzling lights of fabulous Las Vegas. Whoever drinks the water of Lake Tahoe will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the living water of the gospel that is poured out from the One heralded at the gospel preaching churches, wherever they are found, even and including Las Vegas.

”Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)