Thought for Monday, 12 August

Genesis 1:31

Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!  And evening passe

d and morning came, marking the sixth day.

I’ve enjoyed watching bits of the Olympics over the last couple of weeks and over the many previous years, but on reflection on the 2024 offering, I’m submitting a couple of observations for your consideration.

At the start of the games, a former cycling medallist (now retired), whose husband was one of the current cycling coaches predicted, with some confidence, that Britain would win 15 cycling medals and nine of these would be gold.  They actually achieved 11 cycling medals, with two of these being gold.

I put the tv on last week one afternoon and it was skateboarding and another time it was breakdancing!!!!!  This was followed by teeny yachts where the race was restarted because of the wind (I thought that without this wind, these wee things wouldn’t be moving at all)!.

Then there was diving and for the life of me, I couldn’t tell the difference between the dives that were awarded 9 points and the dives that were awarded 6 points.  I thought they were all fantastic.

As far as the opening and closing ceremonies went, I have no words to describe how I felt about these.

For all these things I’ve mentioned, there are the commentators.  Sometimes I think they sound fairly knowledgeable, and at other times, they sound as if they’re making it up as they go along.

I guess there are some spectacular achievements by men and women across the world.  The Taj Mahal comes to mind along with the castles, bridges and harbours in this country and elsewhere in the world.  I’m sure you can think of many more, but I believe that we get it wrong many more times than we get it right.  There are roads built many years ago that are still serviceable today whilst our ‘modern’ roads seem to be continually under repair.

New ‘sports’ have been added to the Olympics by men and women and I struggle to see these changes having improved anything.  In some cases, they are viewed as having made things worse.  In todays’ extract from the first book of the bible, we see that what God created was perfect.  It didn’t need tweaking.  There is nothing that mankind could do to improve upon it.  The examples given today are just a few ways of showing how flawed our intelligence and thinking is compared to that of the God we worship.  God got creation right first time and the only weaknesses and challenges to it are all man-made, just like everything else in this world.

Prayer - Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us a clear understanding of the Biblical foundation of the creation of the world.  We pray for those that have been blinded to the truth by those who do not know you or believe in you.  We pray that many will come to recognise the error of humanistic philosophies, liberal theology, and false religious systems and may they be saved by grace through faith in Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen