Dear Friends
Finally we are in summer months and hopefully enjoying our time with friends and family, flowers blooming, beautiful colours everywhere. The bulbs that were once resting for the whole year were woken up by the Creator’s voice that it’s time to spread the beauty around! Imagine how the creation year after year, decades after decades, century after centuries continues doing what was began at the time of creation by our Holy and Creative Triune God. I love Psalm 19 that so beautifully describes the work of our Creator’s hands.
After having read about God’s consistent love, provisions and the free gift of nature that we all can enjoy, whose heart will not be filled with gratitude to the Great and Awesome God! This is what we enjoy reading the Word, the Bible in our hands – the ripples of joy and gratitude for Him.
On the other hand, this beautiful world is being marred by those who demand better deals, asking for more and the result is wars, blame games, crashing economies and finally the strikes at the cost of others, hampering peoples’ movement and causing further discomfort.
Two powers standing face to face. The Power of God that looks out for the best in and for people; the power that heals, restores, rebuilds, reshapes and reforms, brings peace and harmony. And there is the power of evil that does just the opposite. In John 10:10 Jesus says, ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’
Talking about the ripple effect and the power, I think of God and His surmountable love for the world He has so beautifully created. The love that knows no bound but ‘keeps giving’. Giving without measure, giving without being biased. And that love poured out everything of Him. John 3:16, ‘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.’
So, the sun continues to shine at His command to bring warmth, light and life. Pondering on this thought I recalled what Genesis 8:22 says, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” God of creation 2
and our Keeper continues to stay faithful to His promises. In and through Jesus, He continues to give us the life in His mercy and grace. The power of His Holy Spirit continues to counsel, guide and empower us to further the ripples of His life-giving love to the world around us. Are we willing to share? Think for a moment, what would happen if the God of creation decides to go on strike. Would we be able to cope? Would that allow the life to exist? I recall a poem that I read a few years ago by a gospel poet Walt Huntley:
If God should go on strike
How good it is that God above, has never gone on strike,
Because He was not treated fair in things He didn’t like.
If only once, He’d given up and said, ‘That’s it. I’m through.
I’ve had enough of those on Earth so this is what I’ll do:
I’ll give my orders to the sun, cut off the heat supply!
And to the moon – give no more light, and run the oceans dry.
Then to make things really tough and put the pressure on,
Turn off all the vital oxygen till every breath is gone!”
You know He would be justified if fairness was the game,
For no one has been more abused or met with more disdain
Than God, and yet He carries on, supplying you and me
With all the favours of His grace, and everything for free.
Men say they want a better deal, and so on strike they go,
But what a deal we’ve given God to whom all things we owe.
We don’t care whom we hurt to gain the things we like;
But what a mess we’d all be in if God should go on strike.
– Taken from Homespun Gospel: The Poetry of Walt Huntley
Blessings,
Caroline Pathak