Three people died this week: Don Kirshner, the veteran music mogul, hailed a “legend” for his creation and management of young rock groups in the 60s and 70s, including the Monkees; Sargent Shriver, described as the most influential non-elected politician in U.S. history, serving his brother-in-law John Kennedy’s administration as head of the Peace Corp and leading the War on Poverty for President Lyndon Johnson; and, an unnamed and unknown elderly man in Mongolia. The first two are being feted in the national press for their portfolios of achievement. The third is remembered only by the family he loved and the village he served throughout his unnoticed, publicly unremarkable life. Why consider the three? Because somewhere in our pantheon of cultural icons we as earth children have been fooled into the notion that the “legends” created by the press, the media and the public’s raucous clamor for the next “American Idol” are who matter most. But of course we know better . . . don’t we? It was Jesus who acclaimed the anonymous and unfeted of humanity by especially recognizing “whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple” (Matthew 10:42). No public office, no tabloid headline—just the anonymous gift of a cool drink of water to some stranger in need. And it is that one, Jesus declared, who “shall by no means lose his [eternal] reward.” No wonder these words a century ago: “Do not shut yourselves up to yourselves, satisfied to pour out all your affection upon each other. Seize every opportunity to contribute to the happiness of those around you, sharing with them your affection. Words of kindness, looks of sympathy, expressions of appreciation, would to many a struggling, lonely one be as a cup of cold water to a thirsty soul. A word of cheer, an act of kindness, would go far to lighten the burdens that are resting heavily upon weary shoulders. It is in unselfish ministry that true happiness is found. And every word and deed of such service is recorded in the books of heaven as done for Christ” (7T 50, emphasis supplied). Reminds me of the librarian poet Sam Walter Foss’s composition, “The House by the Side of the Road.” It’s a credo you and I can live by this year, can’t we? There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the place of their self-content; There are souls like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths Where highways never ran— But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Let me live in a house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by— The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat Nor hurl the cynic's ban— Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I see from my house by the side of the road By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife, But I turn not away from their smiles and tears, Both parts of an infinite plan— Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead, And mountains of wearisome height; That the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night. And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice And weep with the strangers that moan, Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone. Let me live in my house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by— They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish - so am I. Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban? Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
Pastors' Blog
By Pioneer Pastors
When was the last time snow was on the ground in 49 of our 50 states? Welcome to the Winter of 2011. But the tragic killings and attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords in Tuscon, Arizona, last weekend are a somber reminder that this nation’s greatest challenge is not meteorological but moral. On this weekend that remembers the civil rights legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., it is well for us to ponder the morality deficit America yet faces. Our civil (or uncivil) discourse has been under heightened media scrutiny since the Tuscon tragedy. And while it is not the purpose of this blog to evaluate the merits/demerits of the charged rhetoric of both major political parties in this nation, perhaps there is in all of this a renewed calling to the followers of Jesus Christ. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” our Master once intoned (Matthew 5:9). So stepping away from last weekend’s violence (perpetrated perhaps by one in the clutch of mental illness), how can radical disciples of Christ live out his calling to peace-making? Couldn’t we reject the use of violence in all its forms to advance peace? We could. But beyond that—what about our own discourse? How civil is it in our board rooms and dorm rooms and bedrooms? How civil is it with those we like, with those who don’t like us? If we infused Jesus’ call to become peacemakers into our daily conversations, what effect would it have on the words that pass our lips? “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Colossians 4:6). At some point radical Christianity and Adventism have to move beyond petitions against hand guns and protests against war. For those who insist on these forms of public advocacy, Jesus’ enjoinder—“This ought you to have done, and not leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:23)—is timely. Namely, until peace-making infects/affects the very words we articulate in public discourse or in private conversation, until our speech as radical followers of the Christ is “full of grace” and “seasoned” with the salt of the Golden Rule (saying to others what we wish they would say to us), what good is all the championing of peace and justice and morality on the broad stage of public attention, when our private speech is uncivil, unkind, uncalled for? But in the end could it be that the example of our Master under provocation and verbal assault is peace and grace’s unassailable weapon? “But Jesus kept silent” (Matthew 26:63). No words at all are sometimes the most potent of all, aren’t they? So then why despair? In a world of such wanton violence, let us renew our choice to follow the Peacemaker. And with words carefully chosen and seasoned by his grace, let us win the heart of both friend and foe with language—private or public—that honors the Christ we follow.
Scientists think they’ve found the secret to our good and bad habits. It has to do with the pleasure-sensing chemical dopamine, coursing up and down our body’s internal highways. According to an AP report this week, dopamine “conditions the brain to want that reward again and again—reinforcing the connection each time—especially when it gets the right cue from your environment” (South Bend Tribune 1-4-11). For example, you enjoy munching on chips (no doubt a healthful kind). You usually do it before supper, while you’re watching the evening news. (I know the routine well!) Dopamine links your desire for those chips to the environmental stimulus of watching the evening news, and pretty soon your brain’s dopamine-rich striatum region links both activities to a desired reward—pleasurable taste and relaxation. Turn on the news, get hungry for chips—munch some chips, turn on the television. The more repetitions, the stronger the dopamine tie that binds.
“‘Why are bad habits stronger? You’re fighting against the power of an immediate reward,’ says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an authority on the brain’s pleasure pathway. It’s the fudge vs. broccoli choice: Chocolate’s yum factor tends to beat out the knowledge that sticking with veggies brings an eventual reward of lost pounds. ‘We all as creatures are hard-wired that way, to give greater value to an immediate reward as opposed to something that’s delayed,’ Volkow says” (ibid).
And the problem is that we tend to overestimate our ability to resist temptations around us, “thus undermining attempts to shed bad habits, says experimental psychologist Loran Nordgren, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. ‘People have this self-control hubris, this belief they can handle more than they can,’ says Nordgren, who studies the tug-of-war between willpower and temptation” (ibid).
All of which means that establishing good habits and ridding bad habits requires more than simply composing another list of New Year’s resolutions. “Been there—done that.” Based on this AP report of their studies, here are five new routines researchers recommend adding to your good-habits strategy:
“Repeat, repeat, repeat the new behavior—the same routine at the same time of day.” Pick a time of day, select an activity, and stick to it. Personal prayer and Bible study first thing the morning. Walking, jogging, working out at the same time each day. The striatum will eventually recognize the new habit and will “reward” you for faithfulness to the new routine, or “disturb” you when you neglect it.
“Exercise itself raises dopamine levels,” which means adding this good habit to your routine will raise your feel-good sense of vitality.
“Reward yourself with something you really desire.” A new book or a CD or an outfit you’ve been needing reinforces your own intentions to stick to good habit routine.
“Stress can reactivate the bad-habit circuitry.” So “chilling out” isn’t such a bad idea when your circuits are on overload.
“Cut out the rituals linked to your bad habits.” As the report puts it, “No eating in front of the TV, ever.”
But there’s one more strategy science can never measure. It’s your faith-factor. Repeat this dynamite promise from God daily and your striatum will quickly get the message:
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Too simple? Hardly! Begin each day in quiet conversation with Him through a story-a-day reading through the Gospels, and you will unite yourself with Christ himself, as you discover for yourself his omnipotent friendship—a power even stronger than dopamine.
“Return that gift before you get it.” Leave it to Amazon.com to “solve” our gift-receiving woes! The Washington Post this week announced that the mega online mail-order giant has come up with a solution to those gifts from “Aunt Mildred” you’ve never known what to do with—from “The Stallion Stable Music Box” that must have been a beauty on the computer screen but turned out to be a White Elephant under the Christmas tree, to “The Thread and Bobbin Sewing Kit” that, truth be known, will never see the light of day. “These gifts sent via some warehouse many miles away are not only unwanted, but also a multimillion-dollar headache: They have to be repacked, labeled, dropped off and shipped back to Amazon’s Island of Misfit Toys.” After which a new present will have to be “packed, labeled, and shipped again. Efficient, the process is not.” (South Bend Tribune 12-28-2010)
So Amazon has “quietly patented” a way whereby you can return your gifts before you even get them. This new option, apparently planned in time for next Christmas, will allow you to designate individuals who consistently send you what you don’t want or need—so that if they order another gift for you through Amazon it will be “vetted before anything ships.” I.e., you’ll have the option to “convert” the gift to one of your liking. The patent says: “The user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” (Ibid)
You can imagine the uproar from the etiquette crowd! Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of the proper-manners queen, Emily Post, warns of a major backlash, and hopes Amazon abandons the notion: “This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving. The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world’s transactions.” (Ibid) Well put, Miss Post.
“Just another one of the world’s transactions.” Which, of course, can’t be said for the Gift Heaven gave Earth long, long ago, can it? That Gift first borne on a barnyard trough . . . and eventually spiked to a Roman cross. Return the Gift to the Giver? And yet the small print of this intergalactic struggle still called “the great controversy” includes an opt-out proviso— a provision acted upon, sadly enough, time and again: “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). I.e., they turned down the Gift.
On this New Year’s Day we gather at the foot of the cross, at the feet of the Gift. Because it surely dawns upon our collective consciousness that in the words of F. F. Bruce, “the total adequacy of Christ” is our truest vision in the year before us, and our only hope in the life that is left. “But God forbid [this New Year] that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).
Since mine eyes have gazed on Jesus
I’ve lost sight of all beside
So enchained my spirit’s vision
Gazing on the Crucified.
—Oswald Chambers
Poor Europe—“white Christmas”—bad timing. The wintery blast that has piled a mound of snow across Europe the past few days might have started out a “Christmas winter wonderland.” But the only wonder left now is how to untangle this perfect storm of meteorological and technological gridlock that has turned the continent’s major airports into bed and breakfasts, minus the bed and the breakfast. Nobody’s humming “White Christmas” anymore (especially since that Irving Berlin composition is a distinctly American tradition). No wonder the mayor is so uptight! “Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, appeared frustrated that the winter weather could completely snarl air travel through Heathrow, where only a ‘handful’ of flights were landing and taking off on Monday, according to a spokeswoman. ‘It can’t be beyond the wit of man surely to find the shovels, the diggers, the snowplows or whatever it takes to clear the snow out from under the planes, to get the planes moving and to have more than one runway going,’ Mr. Johnson said, according to the Associated Press." From the New York Times.”
“It can’t be beyond the wit of man.” Well put, Lord Mayor. But then again some Christmas realities are utterly beyond our human ken, are they not? There was no snowfall that autumn night over Bethlehem. Just an over-crowded inn, filled to its rafters with out-of-towners for the Roman tax census. Shepherds with their flocks and camp fires dotted the midnight hillsides surrounding the village (evidence enough that the Holy Night came in autumn, not in winter). Suddenly from out of nowhere in the darkness a celestial being materialized in an explosion of glory before the stricken shepherds. “ . . . and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’” (Luke 2:10-14)
Wide-eyed and dumb with fear, that band of watchers had gazed upon “the brightest picture ever beheld by human eyes” (The Desire of Ages 48). How long did it take to find voice and sight in the dark again? However long, they abandoned flocks, raced to the sleepy village, located the backyard cave-stable with the designated feeding trough, and out-of-breath stumbled into the presence of God in the still glistening Newborn.
“It can’t be beyond the wit of man.” But in this case it truly is. Far beyond our paltry finitude, no matter how long we brood over that manger scene. “Wonder, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth!” (p 49) No wonder the compelling human response to the God who tiptoed into town that night is to worship him.
Did you see that hastily snapped picture of Prince Charles and Camilla? On their way last Thursday evening to a London gala, the royal couple’s vintage Rolls Royce limousine inadvertently drove into an unrelated street riot and was suddenly engulfed by a sea of demonstrating youth. When the young rioters (who were protesting Parliament’s decision to hike tuition fees in UK universities) spotted the future king of England and his wife inside the automobile, they turned on the limousine, pelting it with eggs, smashing open a window and threatening to who-knows-what! The prince pushed his wife to the floor of the car to shield her. And their driver fortunately was able to flee the scene. The royals, though badly shaken, arrived at the gala in gracious spirits. They don’t treat future kings like they used to, do they? Which, of course, is the sad commentary on the story of Christmas as well. The King of the universe, come to earth as the promised Messiah, couldn’t even rent a motel room for his own birth! “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder.” “And she . . . laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Isaiah 9:6; Luke 2:7). Deitrich Bonhoeffer once reflected, “All Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders that God became man.” Wonder of all wonders, indeed. That wonder is nearly palpable in the The Desire of Ages chapter on Christ’s birth: “The King of glory stooped low to take humanity. Rude and forbidding were His earthly surroundings. His glory was veiled, that the majesty of His outward form might not become an object of attraction. He shunned all outward display. . . . With amazement the heavenly messengers beheld the indifference of that people whom God had called to communicate to the world the light of sacred truth. . . . It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man’s nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. . . . Wonder, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth!” (pp 43-49, selected) They don’t treat future kings like they used to, do they? Do we? The wonder of wonders in this season of Noel is not so much that God became a man . . . but that he even wanted to. For look how we treated him when he came to us. And is it any better today? In the words of that old spiritual, “Sweet little Jesus boy, they made you be born in a manger; sweet little holy Child, we didn’t know who you was.” But we do, don’t we? And so this Christmas will you join me in bowing low before the King—not as a perfunctory expression of Christian devotion, but rather as the quiet pledge of a redeemed vassal to gladly serve the King whose infinite sacrifice has purchased our freedom? “‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!’” (Revelation 5:12). Amen.
"12 Daze of Christma$”—that’s how the Boston Herald headlined the story this week of PNC Wealth Management’s annual analysis of the beloved Christmas song. You know the one: “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.” Two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds, five golden rings . . . all the way up to “twelve drummers drumming.” Our friends at PNC (BTW, that’s not PMC, our congregation) Wealth Management—who in managing your wealth this year, apparently had time to spare—calculated how much it would cost you to give your “true love” the 364 gifts in the song. “The total cost for all 364 gifts mentioned in the popular yule time tune skyrocketed 10.8 percent [thanks to climbing gold prices] to more than $96,000.” That’s $96,824, to be exact! (http://news.bostonherald.com/entertainment/lifestyle/...)
What shall we say about a culture that names the Friday after Thanksgiving—the Friday this year that found stores opening their doors to frenzied Christmas shoppers at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., or stayed open all night—“Black Friday”? The day after we have theoretically thanked God for another year of divine benediction is black Friday? Early estimates for Black Friday purchases by Americans this year are $10.69 billion. (One hundred of those Black Fridays and we could pay off the nations’s $1.3 trillion budget deficit!) And as if Black Friday weren’t enough, Cyber Monday this week netted an estimated $1.023 billion of online Christmas sales, setting a new one-day record for cyberspace spending.
“And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).
Is it too late to celebrate a counter-cultural Christmas this year? To radically simplify our gift-giving? To inform our loved ones that this year a gift to charity in our names would be very special indeed (our church staff is trying that for the second time this year)? I’m not wanting to become the Grinch who stole Christmas—but I am asking myself if maybe the silver light of this season’s Narrative is utterly anti-commercial, counter-materialism—and that maybe there are more meaningful ways to commemorate His birth.
What if you gave Christ as a gift this year? Amazon.com carries a new edition of an old classic for $2.99! A friend sent me this new edition earlier this year, and I read it through over the summer. Gone are the old King James quotations. Replaced now with NKJV and even NIV in places, this new paperback edition of The Desire of Ages is a keeper. Go online and check it out for yourself. For $2.99 you could buy a dozen of them for your dearest family and friends. I promise you that this fresh new NKJV edition makes this magnum opus of Ellen White’s a heart-stirring read. It’s my favorite book. In it you’ll meet the counter-cultural Jesus as you never have before. What a Savior and Friend! Share him with your world. And let Christmas this year truly be about the Gift “my True Love gave to me.”
MISS YOUR CELL PHONE? I read historian Benson Bobrick’s fascinating Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired. It’s the story of two English reformers—John Wycliffe, the brilliant Oxford scholar and Bible translator, remembered as “the Morning Star of the Reformation”; and martyr William Tyndale, whose English translation of Holy Scripture led to the King James Version and made the English Bible (next to the Bible itself) “the most influential book ever published.”
The profound impression Bobrick’s history has left with me is the immensity of the debt we owe to these who sacrificed all so that we might possess our English Bibles today. So bright was the mind of Wycliffe that “even his later enemies agreed (as one confessed) that he was ‘second to none in philosophy, unrivalled in the Schools, and the flower of Oxford. Many divines esteemed him little less than a god.’ He wrote many works in Latin as well as English . . . and his theological tomes were as knotty and learned as those by any scholiast. One weary Czech scribe, copying out a section, exclaimed in the margin, ‘Dear God, help me to finish this work as quickly as I can’” (27). William Tyndale, from the protective cover of Holland, sent copies of his own English translation across the channel into England, and quietly the seeds of an eventual revolution—both spiritual and political—were sown. Not without price. On October 6, 1536, he was "brought forth to the place of execution, tied to a stake, strangled first by the hangman, then ‘with fire consumed.’ Before he lost consciousness, he cried ‘with a fervent zeal and a loud voice: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”’” (135).
At what price we possess our English Bibles this Thanksgiving! And yet are we really that thankful? Some dear soul forwarded to me a forwarded-forwarded-forwarded email (you know the type) with the simple query—“Ever wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phone?” Now the FW’ed piece had my attention. “What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets? What if we flipped through it several time a day? What if we turned back to go get it if we forgot it?” (That strikes home, because how many times have I remembered a couple blocks from home my cell phone back at the house? Leave it at home—are you kidding? I slam on my breaks, pull a quick U-turn—because I can’t live without my cell phone!) “What if we used it to receive messages from the text? What if we gave it to kids as gifts? What if we used it when we traveled? What if we used it in case of emergency?”
A century before cell phones Ellen White wrote: “The Bible is God's voice speaking to us, just as surely as if we could hear it with our ears. If we realized this, with what awe we would open God's Word and with what earnestness we would search its precepts. The reading and contemplation of the Scriptures would be regarded as an audience with the Infinite One” (My Life Today 283).
Then this Thanksgiving—even as we sing in the language of the old King James, “Come, ye thankful people, come”—shall we not fervently thank God for the inestimable gift of His Book?
Jesus just grew bigger! Ever since last Saturday the small Polish town of Swiebodzin has been high-fiving in celebration, believing they have just created the largest Jesus in the world. It’s been the life dream of their 78 year old local priest, Sylwester Zawadaki, to craft the world’s largest Jesus statue. And it looks like he just succeeded. When the crane lowered the golden-crowned statue head onto the granite body last weekend, the priest announced that his new “Christ the King” statue measures 108 feet or 33 meters, “one meter for every year that Jesus lived.” Some members of the construction team, however, said that if the mound upon which the statue towers and the crown atop the head are included, it rises 51 meters (167 feet). By contrast Rio de Janiero’s famed Christ the Redeemer statue stands 125 feet tall. So villagers are already counting the profits that will surely accrue once tourists begin pilgrimages to this giant Jesus.
A century ago the life ministry of a little 5’ 2” tall woman revealed that the Jesus in her heart stood very tall indeed. Through the years as I’ve read this woman’s writings, I have collected some of her “very tall Jesus” statements. Here’s one: “... were thousands of the most gifted men to devote their whole time to setting forth Jesus always before us, studying how they might portray his matchless charms, they would never exhaust the subject” (Review and Herald June 3, 1890).
Here’s another: “O precious, loving, long-suffering, long-forbearing Jesus, how my soul adores Thee! That a poor, unworthy, sin-polluted soul can stand before the Holy God, complete in the righteousness of our Substitute and Surety! Wonder, O Heavens, and be astonished, O earth, that fallen man is the object of His infinite love and delight” (Letter 2, December 29, 1889).
And another: “I love to speak of Jesus and his matchless love. I have not one doubt of the love of God. I know that he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto him. His precious love is a reality to me, and the doubts expressed by those who know not the Lord Jesus Christ, have no effect upon me. ... Do you believe that Jesus is your Saviour, and that he has manifested his love for you in giving his precious life for your salvation? Take Jesus as your personal Saviour. Come to him just as you are; give yourself to him; grasp his promise by living faith, and he will be to you all that you desire” (Review and Herald June 23, 1896).
No question the Jesus of Ellen White was a towering Savior. That’s why at this website we’ve been carefully examining the gift of Christ through the life ministry of this woman. Why not examine the evidence for yourself—download the five podcasts/videocasts—call our toll free number (877 HIS WILL) and order a free copy of her best-selling and most translated classic, Steps to Christ (the little book that reintroduced me to my Savior at a crisis point in my young life—I’m certain it will bless you, too). Because you don’t have to go to Poland to meet the towering Jesus. If you want him, your door is large enough to let him in.
Another election wrapped up, another terrorist plot averted. While I’m not suggesting this week’s two biggest headlines have any connection, have you ever wondered how proactive God is in the life of our civilization? He probably doesn’t keep an electoral scorecard of favorite politicians, and he certainly isn’t the author of evil conspiracies. Nevertheless, could it be that he is personally, actively very much engaged in what goes on around this planet? Let me explain.
I find particular comfort in a dusty line from the ancient prophet Daniel: “[God] changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings” (Daniel 2:21, 22). The New Living Translation renders that line, “He determines the course of world events.” Does that mean God works through the electoral processes of a democracy to put individuals into leadership/office who are sympathetic to his own agenda for humanity? He certainly did that with Nebuchadnezzar, the despot of Babylon who became a defender of the true God through the influence of Daniel.
History has repeatedly shown that all it takes is one receptive leader, open to the intervening Spirit of God, to protect God’s “defenseless” community of faith and thus advance the divine agenda and mission on earth.
But averting terrorist plots? Consider Daniel’s further depiction of our proactive God: “He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him” (Daniel 2:22). Do you realize what might have happened had the “underwear bomber” last Christmas and the two cargo plane package bombs discovered this week (both plots linked to the same Islamic terrorist organization) successfully detonated? With no immediate or obvious clue for the explosion(s), air travel as we know it would certainly have been instantly halted—impacting international commerce, exchange, finances, economics, politics in ways we cannot now fathom. And we can only imagine the deleterious effects on the growth of God’s kingdom on earth.
But the evil that is plotted in darkness is seen and known to the God who is light. “He determines the course of world events.” Which is why I pray two prayers when I read of averted terror—#1, thanks be to God, who has once again prevented the closing of a global door to the advance of his everlasting gospel on earth; and #2, God be merciful to his 1.4 billion Muslim children and protect them from the raging backlash that would diminish their openness to the truth about His character.
A century ago Ellen White observed: “In the annals of human history the growth of nations, the rise and fall of empires, appear as dependent on the will and prowess of man. The shaping of events seems, to a great degree, to be determined by his power, ambition, or caprice. But in the word of God the curtain is drawn aside, and we behold, behind, above, and through all the play and counterplay of human interests and power and passions, the agencies of the all-merciful One, silently, patiently working out the counsels of His own will” (Education 173). Elections and terrorist plots included? But of course. Which is why he is God. And why we can be very grateful.
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