Changing Fortunes

C S Lewis

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."

C.S.Lewis

Today I took a break from reading slowly and thoughtfully through the Old Testament and turned to the Psalms. I am quite familiar with Psalm 1 having attributed it to a couple of people I have know over the years but Psalm 2 is less familiar apart from the opening verses. I read it several times, then I mulled over each verse in turn and it was the final verse that inspired me to write this brief blog.

12 

Kiss his son, or he will be angry

    and your way will lead to your destruction,

for his wrath can flare up in a moment.

    Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

The consequences of nations not recognising, honouring, and obeying God are reflected in the passage, “and your way will lead to your destruction”. This caused me to think of our nation, Great Britain. This tiny kingdom that conquered half of the globe, sending Christian missionaries in their thousands to new, often undiscovered lands (undiscovered by the West that is, the people who lived there knew where they were), has seen a rapid demise in its fortunes over the past 100 years. 

This once powerful nation that ruled the seas with its navy is now an insignificant has-been on the world stage, despite what our rulers (I choose that word specifically) might think or try to convey. Our economic fortunes have fared no better, we are bankrupt and produce very little that can be traded on the world markets. Can we link this change in fortunes to a change in our faith in our creator God? Makes you think doesn’t it, and if it doesn’t, it should!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pompus?

Reading James the other day I was quite surprised to find the word “religious”. There in the midst of my favourite book of the Bible was a word that frequent readers of my blog will know often raises some comment from myself, if not my hackles, especially in a 21 st  century context. So, when I saw it there, having never noticed it before for some reason, I had to do some digging (vernacular for research) on why this word was used. A quick search revealed that “religious”, or “religion” is not a common word in the Bible, in fact it is only used 6 times, twice in James in quick session, three times in Acts, once in Colossians. Referring to one of the heavy tombs available to me in the form of Strong's Concordance - in fact although I do possess a copy I cheated and enquired of it online - I discovered that in Greek religious was θρησκὸς (thrēskos) and that it “refers probably to a careful observance of religious restrictions” and in a limited sense, it may mean devout. Further enqui...
Read more

Choose the Red Pill!

Image
  What we read in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy is both amazing and terrifying; God knew that in spite of all he had done and was about to do for Israel, that the people would still go ahead and rebel. He knew that they would, they knew that they would, and they knew that he knew they would, but they still did it. For me this speaks volumes about two things:  One is that we have complete and total free will before God, I utterly reject the doctrine of predestination because I believe that no matter how you package it, or what intellectual gymnastics you do with it, this cannot allow for free will. For the Old and New testaments and Gods message therein to be relevant then free will has to stand unadulterated.  Secondly, the wilfulness of the human condition; like Cypher in the matrix movie who, even though he knew that the matrix was an illusion, chose that illusion over the reality of freedom (you can watch it here ). We are presented with an excellent  analog...
Read more

Preaching to the Converted

As I have done myself of numerous occasions along with multitudes of preachers in a church context, I delivered sermons that were just telling people what they know already, telling them how it was. Yes this often involved clarifying points of scripture and encouraging people in their faith, but the messages whilst not falling on deaf ears was generally just going over somewhat familiar ground but in a new way. What we might call 'Preaching to the Converted'. However, in some cases a preacher will actually challenge the converted, assaulting the listeners ears and their faith, and getting them to ask themselves where they actually stand with God. Today I had the pleasure of one such sermon preached by a dear friend of mine at a local Baptist Church.  Speaking on Ezekiel 37 - the Valley of the Dry Bones - the preacher challenged us to reflect on our own situation, our own faith, our own Christianity by asking if we were in fact Dry Bones; did we come to church faithfully every S...
Read more