What In The World Is Going On?

One of the main complaints veteran's groups make about the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is about the distance most people feel toward the casualties of those conflicts. While I agree with that concern, there is more working here than just that problem. There are so many auto accidents in our nation that unless we are directly affected, we seldom reach out to those who are involved. Suicides, school shootings, workplace murders, and many other crimes flash before our eyes in newspapers, magazines, movies, television shows, and on the Internet. How often do we reach out to the victims through our prayers? If we who believe and live in Christ put a distance between our prayers and those suffering, how much worse does the world treat them?

Part of the blame can be placed on the condition of the world right now. The news of death and suffering is prevalent in our culture. One news web page this morning has at least nine headlines about death or injury. Some days will have more and other days less, but this goes on every day. One can see how our feelings can be dulled by this constant exposure. The empathy and sympathy we once felt can simply be overwhelmed by too much of the same story. Has the love of many grown cold? Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. I didn't make that up; our Lord said it right after that famous statement in John 3:16. Therefore, if Jesus did not condemn when He spoke the prophecy on the Mount of Olives that the love of many would turn cold, perhaps He simply pointed out the condition we live in right now. We cannot take in all the news about death without succumbing to despair, so we distance our minds and become a bit cold. This one deserves a bit of contemplation. Bring it to the Lord in prayer. I am not advising that you take up reading news articles involving death or serious injury as a hobby.

What we may want to take from this is that this condition of coldness is happening. We live in the end times, but not those final seven years we call the Tribulation. However, given the conditions we know that the apocalypse or unveiling of that period is near. The conditions do not set a date; God sets the date. But we can see how another condition has been met for the Tribulation to begin at any moment. The times are getting dark, but remeber the Light and the Life.

Bucky