UPSETTING TIMES . . . BUT GOD IS FAITHFUL

God's creation is so full of so many marvelous and amazing things . . . yesterday we watched a DVD called "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" about the Chaucer Cave in France and other artifacts having to do with what we know about Upper Paleolithic human culture from about 40,000 years ago. And you can see from the post below that we are still finding out all sorts of amazing things about the earth. We have come a long way, baby, although sometimes we despair when we become aware of the violence, hatred, bigotry and inequality that besets us in so many parts of the world. My heart is broken because of what has been happening in Baltimore where so many of my friends are in ministry. 
 
I grieve for the people suffering because of fundamentalist violence in the Middle East and oppression in Ukraine. The world seems to be devolving into ever-increasing chaos as we live with more and more kinds of strife and political polarization that only increases distrust and our inability to work together for the peace we so desperately need.
We have such a long way to go. What does the Lord require of us in this era in which we find ourselves? To begin with, that question was answered many centuries ago as the prophet Micah passed on -- we are "to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God." (From Micah 6:8.) Even though that may sound simple, it's a tall order. We can only achieve the first and second activities by working hard to do the last with His help. Through Micah God was speaking to each individual person, but collectively as a nation, since our inception we have pledged to strive for the reality that justice and mercy be intrinsic characteristics of our culture while also insuring that all of our citizens have the right to walk humbly with God or not . . . and worship whatever in whatever way or not, while trying to make sure that the state does not interfere with or control religion.

But so many things about what and why the Founders of our nation set things up the way they did have been taken to extremes. And so much that had to do with cultural beliefs and biblical times is no longer pertinent in our era. Sometimes evil intents are cloaked under the guise of being grounded in revered traditional dictate and traditions. When the founders wrote the Bill of Rights, the right to bear arms was important to include because the British government had used force in ways that were unjust to the citizens of their colonies. Despite the level of gun violence and all the ways that even little children all of our society are endangered by the proliferation and out-of-control level of weapons, many people insist that gun-control threatens their freedom.

And despite the fact that bigotry hatred and prejudice can have nothing to do with faith and faithfulness to God who is love, some people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ used passages in the Bible to perpetuate hatred and violence against homosexuals. The Bible must be interpreted out of its historical and cultural context. The only true interpretation of it also must come through prayer and being open to the Holy Spirit. 

When we believe that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that people would not perish but P able to have eternal life in the photos of his joy peace praise and love, there's no way that we can sanction any kind of bigotry hatred prejudice or violence against people taste on what we think the Bible says. God is always on the side of the oppressed and the downtrodden. He is against people being used and abused. He is against promiscuity and he is always on the side of those who love and nurture and care for one another.

Whenever anyone uses the Bible to beat someone else over the head with it, or uses the Bill of Rights to defend and protect the use of violence and oppression against people, all of that is wrong. Jesus weeps.
Hatred and evil, jealousy, bigotry, oppression, injustice and unrighteousness abound in our society and in the wider world. We battle against spiritual forces of evil that court and seduce the hearts of human beings and remain when welcomed or invited because of woundedness or indoctrination. Sometimes it seems like we can't win. 

But the battle belongs to the Lord. And the ultimate victory is His. 

All we are required to do is to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. We can do that by the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. We can reach out in love to everyone. We can continue to trust that God will help us be reminded of the fact that everyone who loves knows God because God is love. And love never ends.

In "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" it was said that the people who visited this show vacate to study it felt the spiritual presence of the prehistoric humans who had made the cave drawings over 30,000 years ago. One of the scientists in the documentary said that human beings should be called "homo spiritualis" instead of "homo sapiens" because what we know is so much less than who we are spiritually. And who we are spiritually deeply connected to the Great Spirit that created us and everything else that exists, seen and unseen.

Love is eternal. It is all that truly counts and all that will remain. We always have a choice every minute of the day to choose love. This decision determines the quality and beauty of true abundant life as opposed to mere existence. And we can't live in the fullness of this love eternally with out being part of it during our life on earth. It seems to be a mystery to some and is outright rejected by others. That's where faith comes in, and faith is a gift available to each one of us. But even when we have received the gift of faith, we don't always act it out. We can really only do that with the help of the Holy Spirit as we continue to walk humbly with the Lord.

My prayer is that we all will open our hearts to the Lord in deeper ways so that His love, grace, mercy, peace and joy will abound today and always.