Good Wednesday morning! Hallelujah on this great day in Christ Jesus! Some little plastic thing has just made the cat's morning; how often do we overlook the simple joys in life while yearning for the complex entertainments the world offers? The Bible is a complex collection of books with one simple message from God: I love you! Some people have never heard that simple message in their time on this planet.
I was reading a book on Indian history last night as a part of my research. It's a tough job, but someone needs to do it. :-) Missionaries to the tribes in the area take a bit of a bad rap in this history. The personality problems of the ministers and their wives are reported in detail, but a person must read between the lines to find the love. The missionaries learned the language of the tribe, even translating the book of Matthew into print, and built a home and church far from their home, family, and friends back east. Then the missionaries did a terrible thing...
Their message for the Indians was that they were all sinners in need of salvation. None were good, no not one. The author of course fails to note that the same message is for all of us. The Indians it seems did not like this message. Well, shiver me timbers, I'll bet that none of us liked it at the start either. You didn't like it, I didn't like it, Joe down the street won't like it, and neither did Dwight Moody, Billy Graham, William Wilberforce, or any other person in history like to be called a sinner, bad, evil, or any other word pointing to our fallen state. We all want to believe that we are basically good and bound for Heaven on an automatic ticket. The missionaries of now and long ago both had the same problem: they were imperfect people called to bring a message to someone who probably didn't want to hear it. All of us are missionaries in a foreign land, none of us is perfect and every one of us has the same message that the people of this world don't want to hear.
Now that you and I have heard the message, accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, and gone out to spread the Good News, we are going to run into some opposition. Much like the missionaries of long ago, Jesus will give us the strength to go on. Have a wonderful new day in Christ!
Bucky
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