Setting priorities

9/30/10 Thursday
Ron and Paula are gone now, flown back to Georgia I presume. As always, their impact on our lives is tremendous. We drove them to Abilene yesterday where he spoke at a Torah group’s meeting. The Torah people are part of the Hebrew roots movement that is so prevalent these days. They are learning and exploring the Jewish heritage of Christianity. With that can come both good and bad as balance is always to be strived for in our faith and in everything the enemy works to disrupt and knock out of balance our beliefs.

We met a wonderful young woman named Jessica. I don’t know what happened to her, if she was born this way or had an accident but Jessica is severely disabled and seems to operate at a very young level, like three or so. She is unable to talk as we do but she can communicate in various ways, sometimes with hard to comprehend speech and sometimes with sign language. I suspect that she understands much more around her than we might think but is less able to convey that. Regardless, there is a purity about her, a childlike love and trust that I wish I could emulate. I can’t, I’ve seen too much and know too much of this world to be able to trust like her. Jessica is an artist who produces wonderful works that are amazing to me in their balance of colors and texture. She is unable to draw objects or people as there are not the fine motor controls in her hands that are required, but can put on canvas colors and patterns that are oddly spiritual. Watching her simple joy and enthusiasm, her love of life despite the great difficulties, as they sang songs at the Torah group, was an inspiration to us.

Ron spoke for two hours. He told of life in the Mid East, of the sacrifice Muslim’s make when they accept Jesus as their Lord and savior, and revealed how God is moving in that hard part of the world. Things are happening that can’t be explained in any logical way. In the Sudan there was a group of Muslims, 121 of them, who were praying in a mosque. They felt a presence and looking up saw Jesus standing there. All of them accepted Him as their Lord and savior, and as a result all of them were put in prison. This is happening time and again all over that part of the world. Where the persecution of Christians is the worst the miraculous happens the most. There are revivals in the prisons and everywhere else as Muslims learn of and find Jesus. The garbage cities, where converted Muslims are taken because they are then considered no better than garbage, are filled now with millions of people and growing.

Things are happening folks, things that can’t be denied. Here in America we have our namby pamby comfortable Christianity where we live in luxury as the world goes to hell, and aren’t willing to sacrifice even a little of it, because that would be inconvenient. So we are consumed with our greed, our lust for more and greater pleasures, feeding our souls that which only causes rot deep inside, deceiving ourselves into thinking we are spiritual, when in truth we are not.

I went to the grocery store today and noticed something called “Halal” (or something like that) chicken. “Strange” I thought so looked at the label more closely. It said the chicken was processed in such a way to comply with Fatwah #345, or some such number. A Fatwah is defined as a legal ruling or opinion of an Islamic scholar and a Halal is an Arabic word meaning lawful or permitted. So Islam is creeping in everywhere, even the grocery store. This is part of the Sharia law that fundamental Muslims want to subject the whole world to, and in doing so take our rights to decide for ourselves away.

We have to draw a line folks, or eventually go into hiding to practice the freedom we hold so dear. Little by little, bit by bit, our freedoms are being chipped away as we blindly go on with our lives, consumed by the entertainments we’ve surrounded ourselves with and concerned with expanding our personal fortunes, all the while death is at the corner waiting. Jesus will return but it won’t be until there has been much suffering. I don’t see this rapture so many talk about in the scriptures, I can’t find it despite looking. So this ticket out of trouble, this easy way out, this doctrine that encourages so many to sit back and be comfortable while the world crumbles around them, may not exist at all. I’m open to opinions on that and am always willing to search the scriptures and know the truth so talk to me.

There is a lot of catch up to do, much has been neglected as we served our friends during their visit here. So I must list them and make priorities. There are bible studies I feel strongly led to write, there are letters to write for the Kairos prison ministry, there are acres of weeds that need mowing, equipment to repair and maintain, a bathroom in the midst of remodeling, and that just scratches the surface. So got to go.