You say the times are evil. Live nobly and you will change the times.
~ St Augustine ~
I must confess I am watching a soap opera. Not the day-time type such as General Hospital, As the World Turns, or All My Children, but the night-time type, re-runs of Downton Abbey. The characters are exquisitely carved and eloquently crafted and provide the essential division of good and evil, vice and virtue, moral capacity or immoral corruption.
The physical setting and staging are staggering, but the spiritual situation is stained with sin. Complete with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, each episode entails the human struggle and encapsulates the inevitable moral failure of man.
Today we are living out our lives on a stage, a set that can be both beautiful and at the same time dangerous. As Christians, we live as aliens in a strange land waiting to go home. We live among people who are spiritually blinded by the god of this world. We live in the midst of a world that is spinning out of control. The words of Friedrich Nietzsche have been extremely prescient: "When the world discovers god is dead there will be universal madness."
In the midst of the madness of man in rebellion against God, we find hope in Jesus
who reminds us:
"I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail."
"Let not your heart be troubled..."
"And lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Serving Him with you
Until He comes for us,
Fred