Our Awesome God!

Recently, at the recommendation of one of our pastors, I began reading Stephen Charnock's The Existence and Attributes of God. I can assure you that, although it is not light reading, it is indeed quite inspiring and thought provoking. (Puritans were not known for their succinctness. As one of my dear brothers in the faith commented once, they were known for adhering to the philosophy that "why use 10 words, when 100 will do"!). Certainly, Charnock goes about explaining his thesis in a quite verbose way. But what he has to say should be something that every Christian ponders in thinking and meditating on the greatness of the God we serve.

"Like Others Who Have No Hope"

"Now concerning those who have fallen asleep,we do not want you to ignorant, that you may not grieve as those who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Recently, one of our dear brothers at Grace passed into eternity, quietly and peacefully. His passing, though rather sudden, has reminded me of the fleeting nature of life and the true meaning of our existence. The apostle Paul had to deal with a myriad of thoughts and ideas about what death was really all about. "What happens when we die"? "How will the dead be raised"? "If the Lord comes, what will happen to those who have already died"? And on and on it went. As you can imagine, a faith that had been established in the Gentile world a mere two decades before the writings of the New Testament, was bound to raise a lot of questions in the minds of the believers. 

"The Least of These"

Forty six years ago this coming Wednesday the nation finally extirpated itself from the quagmire that was the Vietnam war. But only one day earlier on January 22nd, the supreme court handed down its decision that legalized abortion. In the "shadows and penumbras" the highest court of this land found a right for people to murder the unborn. As one posting on the internet puts it "it is hard to believe that this nation has treated the murder of the unborn as a right for 46 years." Exactly. Our nation has sanctioned murder for over four decades and the millions that have been sacrificed at the altar of convenience are an appalling fact. To think that a society that prides itself on its "enlightenment" continues to grind out death after death can only make your head spin. Just one day before we finally ended our participation in the carnage in Vietnam, we sanctioned a carnage that has cost millions more lives than that conflict did.