A Changing World
The world is changing very quickly. We can no longer go out to eat, schools are closed, pubs and restaurants are closed and shopping has gone mad. Mothering Sunday had to be done remotely for many and thousands of people are isolated. Millions of people can no longer go to work. Hospitals are overflowing with patients and loved ones will die before their time. This devastation us happening across the world. Fear is sweeping across our planet.
Despite all this religion gives us hope
Coronavirus has not stopped Spring. Our gardens and countryside are awash with daffodils and blossom. There are new born lambs in the fields.
Psalm 46 in the Bible says this:
“God is our refuge and strength a very present help in times of trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea though it’s waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging”
(NIV Psalm 46:)
At the end of the great flood when Noah and his family were saved, God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13. I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15. I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.17. So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.” ( NIV Genesis 9: 12 -17)
In the New Testament the author of Hebrews writes “ Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever" (NIV Hebrews 13:8)
Also in the New Testament, in his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36. As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39. neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(NIV Roman’s 13:35-39)
In John’s Gospel we can read “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (NIV John 3:16)
The world has been through painful revolutions, two World Wars, dreadful famine, plague, devastating tsunamis and the evil of the holocaust and in the end human love, sacrifice and generosity defeated these catastrophes. There is an unchanging, unfaltering nature of goodness and love in humankind. We can read of and see and experience for ourselves countless examples of this across the world through history and in our present suffering through the Covid 19 pandemic.
The story of Joseph and his coat of many colours reveals that out of evil good can come about. We read that Joseph was sold by his brothers as a slave but he ended up in Egypt interpreting dreams that enabled him to run the food programme during a dreadful famine There are many examples of good coming out of evil in the Bible. It is a regular theme. A further example is when Jesus was crucified which was an evil act but through this God forgives sin.
My message is that in this rapidly changing world that is becoming unrecognisable, there are some gthings that will never change.
