Well, I saw the specialist yesterday and the news is good, She wants me to begin a walking regimen again and has scheduled another stress test in May to keep an eye on the other side where there is a bit of build-up also. Do keep me in your prayers.
So on the whole that news is good, but what is disturbing for me is the report that “As Americans change, so does their religion”. It’s based on a study made by the Pew Forum on Religion and public life.
This report says, “Religion may be about the eternal, but in temporal affairs, it is constantly changing”. And America offers so many choices, so ”people are church-shopping. Either they are looking for something deep and fundamental, or they merely are looking for the kind of people who live like they do, look like they do, and listen to the same kind of music”. And that’s really kind of depressing, or simply sad.
Such a shift in emphasis comes when people do not see the Church as something God has created, and the world is here to fit into it, rather than fitting the Church to our liking.
And that comes when we forget who we are really. Psalm 51,1 puts it quite clearly. “Surely, I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me”.
In truth, we have a broken leg for the race, and there is really nothing we can do to win it. Only Christ, the Savior, can and does win that race for us.
Our culture teaches otherwise. You get what you pay for. So you have a right to pick and choose, to select. That is what makes life for the Christian today so hard. The culture we live in selects, and feels it has the right to pick what it likes, and leaves what it doesn’t.
Yesterday I read of a pastor who was meeting with a couple who were regular members and very good givers also. They were speaking of a young lady who had done some terrible things, but then she had deeply repented and asked for forgiveness. Now she was coming to church, and this couple told the Pastor, “If you allow her to come, we will leave”. In his mind ran this, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you”. Eph.4,32. So he said he could not ask her to stay away, and so they left. Judge that act in light of Scripture.
That seems to be the mind set of so many who leave one church and try another, and another.
It makes the work of missions hard. But we do have only One answer, “Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” Like the disciples, we, too, answer, “Lord, to whom shall we go, You have the words of eternal life.” Jn 6,67.
Deep in the Norwegian island of Svalbard, 600 miles from he north pole, Norway opened a frozen ‘doomsday’ bank for seeds. There millions of seeds will be stored to keep them safe against wars, or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe. The bank is a backup to the other 1400 seed banks around the world, several of which have been destroyed by natural disasters. Samples will be kept in watertight sealed packets behind blast proof doors and concrete walls a meter thick.
We who know the truth, let us keep that truth in simple faith.
GPD 2/27/08
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