10 ‘Be still and know that I am God! I will be honoured by every nation. I will be honoured throughout the world’.
This verse comes from the old Psalm that many of us will remember singing from our childhood onwards that begins with the words ‘God is our refuge and our strength’.
When we look at the world today, it seems we are a long way from seeing this biblical prediction fulfilled. The ‘News’ is filled with corruption, dishonest politicians, criminality on the increase, wars and rumours of wars, religious divides, challenges in our health services and our cost of living continuing to increase. All this is the ‘News’ that some men or women somewhere have decided we should hear. There are other things in the world that are most certainly happening that we never hear about in the news. Included among these omitted news items is the persecution of Christians in many countries throughout the world, the cruel way women are treated in certain countries and the way that the Christian principles that our own country was built on have been continually eroded due to the tolerance and acceptance of alternative non-christian faiths that are based on radically different and opposing principles compared to what we once had.
On a more local level, a friend who is a church elder told me that only last Sunday, there had been a baptism in his church. The number of folks attending specifically for the baptism exceeded the number in his congregation that attended every Sunday. He told me that during the service, a significant number of the visitors were actually tuned into last Sunday’s old firm game on their phones during the service. Some were talking to each other while the service was going on, even getting up and walking about, leaving the sanctuary then coming back and so forth and eventually, the minister had to tell them that this type of behaviour was unacceptable. I can’t even imagine folks behaving like this in church ten or more years ago. My memory tells me that when I was young, even the boys that weren’t that interested in the message, still behaved in a respectful manner while in the sanctuary. When we consider the progress and development of society, the technology might have improved but what has happened that young folks have no idea of how to behave in church when it used to be at the very centre of every community?
In the early days of Christianity, the apostles including Paul preached that salvation is based on Christ and Christ alone. Since those days, the world has changed but that message remains the same, and any deviation from this path by governments, by individuals or by churches can only push people away from our saviour rather than bring them closer. We need to make time in our busy lives just to ‘be still’, remember God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and be thankful that we have knowledge of the Trinity. It is a good position to be in because, as the psalmist reminds us, the day will come when God will be honoured by every nation throughout the world and all will be held to account.
Prayer
Dear God, we come to you as humbly as we know how. We confess our sins, those known and those unknown. Lord, you know that we are not perfect and that we fall short every day of our lives, yet we want to take this moment to say ‘thank you’ for your mercy. Thank you for our health, our families, our friends, the roofs over our heads, the food on our tables and everything we have. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment