Update Mid Jan

It’s Sunday and rather than enjoying a warm sunny summers day outside in Perth I am inside in my office with it currently sitting on 30F (that’s -2C for you metric types). Not in my office but outside that is. Winter is well and truly set in the land of Yank. We have snow on the ground. I have chains in the back of the car (just in case) and it is not expected to get much warmer for at least a week. The other morning it dipped into the teens briefly (-7C). They tell me that it is unusual for Roseburg to get snow but we have had it twice now in the space of a month so I think they are hopping that I don’t see through “the lie!” I now have an appreciation for only living at an elevation of 495 feet. When we moved here in the USA summer elevation didn’t mean a lot to me. After all, how much elevation is there in Perth? If someone tells you your house is at 500 feet you don’t have a concept of what that means, but as you watch the news and see snow level ( a code word for freezing) drop to 1000 feet and then 500 feet. You get an appreciation really quick. On the work side, well life has pretty well dropped back into routine. I am quite enjoying the stability for a change. Well that’s about it for this fortnight. If you send me an email I will shoot you a couple of photo’s from the back of our house so you can see what a real winter looks like. Oh by the way below is another spiel repeat. I’m sorry but, a) I wanted to get a lot of the old one’s up on the blog, b) it was a new-years one and c) I’m only just getting back into the swing of things after Christmas and so I’m a little lazy at the moment. Next time maybe a new one.

Simon

New Years Spiel

Threats of war, unspeakable persecution of God’s people (200,000 Christians martyred last year alone in the Sudan with more expected in the year ahead), plague (AIDS) due to wipe out 2-3 million in Africa, natural disasters, drought, earthquake, the buying and selling of souls (just check out the internet), one world government and a mixing of religion. These are some of the things we can look forward to in the coming year. (I didn’t even mention the weird stuff like alien cults cloning human’s). The thing that I find so amazing is that God told us all of these things were going to happen and because of this we can have hope. Now I could understand if you looked at what I’ve written and you called me a nut. “Hope? Do you see how bad the world is and what we have to look forward to? I mean what kind of world are we leaving our children?” I can answer that—exactly the one God intended us to. In Revelation 1:1 Jesus himself tells us that these things must shortly come to pass. The feeling you get from the passage might be paraphrased, “All the stuff that you are about to read concerning the final days will not just happen. Similar events will come about with increasing rapidity until the really big ones happen.” Now I am not saying that the world ends at midnight tomorrow. Nobody knows the hour or the day. But I do know that we are one day closer than yesterday so I would expect the world to be getting progressively more screwy. It doesn’t mean I throw my hands up and go “Oh well, that’s it then, nothing more to do here.” No, it means that this year, when the nightly news comes on and the fear mongering starts over another peace plan that has failed or how your neighbor might be a terrorist, then I know I can ignore it. Not the problems but the fear. No, this is where my hope and purpose lie for this new year. I can trust Jesus because what He says is what comes about. And this is the good news. He said that he would leave me in this world of death and decay, not because He is a big meanie but to minister to those who He cares so much about. If I do not fear but place my trust in Him then, no matter what I see or hear, He is right there with me, protecting me. He says that He has my best interests at heart. That I can make a difference through him. That I will know peace. And that I need not fear.
This new year as you look at the world and it’s future, I challenge you to throw aside the scare mongering that various interest groups will put up. Don’t buy into the fear that so many would have cripple you. Instead, as you see a broken world falling apart, remember that God tells us that He chose us before the world began for this time. We were made for it. So I encourage you to get equipped for the challenges this year will bring and to reach out to those hiding under a weight of despair with the hope and truth that are within you.