The Greatest Time in History

It was President Barack Obama who called this time we live in, “the best time in human history to be born”, especially if you are in the United States. According to him “whether you live in downtown New York or (in my grandmother’s village) more than two hundred miles from Nairobi, you can hold in your hand more information than the world’s greatest libraries.

I couldn’t agree more. The amount of information we have today and the access to it is phenomenal! There is information for just about everything under the sun, from how to hurt others to how to heal. And this information is usually free! From the greatest classics to most recent literature, the internet is teeming with treasures!

But as wonderful as this sounds, it presents us with a problem. Seeing that we have tons of information out there, should we open ourselves to any and everything? Shouldn’t we be more discerning/wise regarding what we feed ourselves? What would you call a person who leaves a well prepared meal for rotten food in a bin? Mad would be a fitting name I suppose. But aren’t we like that many times? Don’t we feed our eyes and ears, the main portals to our hearts and souls, with filthy and worthless information that destroy us instead of help us. Don’t we spend time on indecent and unwholesome entertainment just for the fun of it?

RE: Why did God save Dr. Ken Brantly and not thousands of Africans from Ebola?

Recently there was an article by Michele Hanson questioning why God saved Dr. Ken Brantly but not the thousands of Africans who died from Ebola virus. There were different responses to it and in this note I wish to add my own perspective to this very controversial topic.

First, we must understand that Ebola is not the first large scale epidemic that has affected people, there was HIV and before that, Smallpox, as well as the Black Death in the Middle Ages. All of these diseases led to the deaths of millions of peoples in many countries. These diseases were spread aggressively mostly as a result of ignorance and fear. Due to desperation from their helplessness to stem the tide of these epidemics, people often became paranoid and resorted to measures that worsened the crisis. Unfortunately these issues are still reflected in some African countries where Ebola has struck. We hear stories of healthcare personnel attacked, Ebola patients abandoned to die, corpses not properly disposed of and inadequate medical resources. It is because of these reasons that diseases, which in better organized countries can be successfully contained, always prove to be very deadly in many poor countries, especially those in Africa.

Jonathan: When loyalty goes horribly wrong

The story of Jonathan in the Bible is one of great loyalty, friendship and courage. Jonathan was the heir to the throne, yet he recognised that God had anointed David, his father’s rival to be king. Instead of bitterness and jealousy, which King Saul harboured, Jonathan was a friend of David and protected him from his father’s schemes.

He also discouraged his father from attempting to kill David and tried speaking sense to the old man, but Saul was treacherous. He would feign repentance only to make another attempt at David’s life.

Jonathan was also a great soldier in his father’s army and won many battles for him. On one occasion, his quick thinking and courage, led to great victory for the Israelites who were outnumbered by the Philistine army. Unfortunately Jonathan was later killed in battle alongside his father, King Saul and his brothers. His death was tragic but I somehow feel it could have been avoided.

IDOLATROUS IMAGINATION

This is not my article, rather it is part of a sermon by Rev. Andrew Giffen of Kirkintilloch Baptist
Church. It is based on the story of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32.

The people of Israel created a golden calf because they wanted an image that their minds could grasp. They bowed down to the calf and worshipped it as if it were God. They knew that it was man-made and breakable. But that was exactly the sort of God they wanted –one they could control. The vast God reduced to something that could be imprisoned in a few ounces of gold. A shrunken powerless God who will do their bidding, protect them alone, and destroy their enemies.

But God instead commands his people to worship him as he is, not as they (or we) would like him to be. God forbids idolatrous imagination. For you see that is the fundamental problem,that the second commandment addresses. We don’t want God to create us – we want to create God. God in my image – not man in God’s image. We want a God we can control, manipulate, regulate. The default position for you and me today is to imagine God the way we want him to be, not the way he has revealed himself to be. For instance you might want a God who saves all people, who sends no-one to hell – so you create in your mind a loving God who is never angry.