PADKOS – 5 March

DREAD AND DESPAIR

Here Job, in the midst of his sufferings, tells us that He knows that his Redeemer lives. His own life is ebbing away, and he has no more hope in time, so it is to Eternity that he looks, and he fixes his eyes on that. When there is no more hope in time to what will you pin your hopes?

If you have any hope of man being able to bring himself out of the terrible mess into which he has walked, then you must either be an incurable optimist or quite blind.

• Medical reports show doctors are in despair – despite what the newspapers report, Aids is out of control. Promiscuity and perversion are now a way of life, or more honestly, a way of death. Cancer is more prevalent than ever before, with new strains finding their way into bodies at an alarming rate. The long-term effects of antibiotics on humans is causing alarm and is now being labelled as possible doctor engendered diseases, because so little research has taken place into the effects of so many antibiotics being prescribed.
• Environmental reports show environmentalists are in despair – pollution is becoming worse and worse. What to do with atomic and mercury waste is a never-ending source of worry for those who wish to maintain a clean world. Hundreds of thousands of barrels containing highly toxic waste being dumped into the sea have recently been discovered leaking and polluting the waters of huge fishing grounds. The effects on humans eating fish which swim in such waters is also cause for concern. As human inventiveness increases so does the production of dangerous chemicals which defy safe removal once they have been introduced.
• Military reports show soldiers are in despair – weapons of mass destruction are out of control. Guns are freely available and if recent atrocities carried out at schools and churches are anything to go by, the use of them on innocent children and adults has reached an intolerable level. Radiation, chemical and gas weaponry are being manufactured all over the world and those who seem prepared to use them in a war are the most violent and savage nations on earth today.
• Police reports show police are in despair – Sin and rebellion are out of control. Governments are being held to ransom by criminals. Whole countries are being run by criminals. Drugs are everywhere. It is said that apart from newly printed money there is not one bank note anywhere that does not have traces of cocaine on them, such is the extent of that curse. Gangs and yob culture are the order of the day, with the law courts being run by mostly humanists and secularists who in their very actions and deliberations favour the criminal rather than the victim. A recent example of this was that of a man raping and savagely beating a young girl and who was let free because he was from a religious society and background where this type of treatment of women was considered normal because they were of a lower class than males! The newspapers, on hearing the Magistrate’s sentence, demanded to know if we as a society had gone completely mad!

As one man said: The criminals used to be behind bars and others walked free, now the rest of us are behind bars and they are free. He was the manufacturer of steel safety gates, burglar bars and security fencing.

There is no doubt that evil pervades every area of society, as men have rejected God as their Solution, or Christ as their Saviour.

In such a day:

• The pessimist will give up.
• The realist will look up, but
• The optimist should wake up!

For the believer we can echo the words of Isaiah:

There is hope for those who trust Christ as their Saviour, and my prayer is that you will do just that. Turn your life over to Him and learn to live in Him and for Him, for nothing else matters.