STAY YOUNG

A new, young Christian, for sometimes old-time-Christians lose their zeal… a new, young Christian once pressed his cause for Christ with a bit too much fervor. The man to whom he was speaking finally said, “Why don’t you just mind your own business?”

The young layman then more gently replied, “Perhaps I did come across too strong, but you see, ever since I became a Christian, you are my business.”

Charles Spurgeon, a well known Evangelist put it this way, “…if you aren’t lighting any fires maybe it is because you are not carrying any flame. One thing is for certain, when you talk about heaven let your face light up. When you talk about hell, your everyday face will do.”

Our forefathers were nomads. The horizon was not something blocked out by urban high-rises or suburban sprawl. The horizon was where they might be next week. Where they might hunt, or plant, or maybe stay a few short months or years before the western wanderlust got to them again. They lived in tents or makeshift shelters or slept beneath the stars. God’s voice spoke in the thunder, in the rippling streams, in the sound of cracking frost beneath their feet. God is – and when they said it they meant it because He was close to their five senses, which, of course, increased the sensitivity of their souls.

It is not easy to see God in the rivers and lakes that stink of dead fish, nor in the neon lights that blink progress through the smog. Nor in a society whose only monument is an asphalt road.

It is not easy to see God in the hunger and poverty on which we too often turn our backs, nor in the children we condemn to a lifetime of hatred. Nor where speed is king and heaven seems too slow and out of date.

It is not easy to see God in our mastery of warfare, in our skill at slaughter and conflagration.

But it is what we must do…believe in and pray to and vitalize the reality of the God who made us and did not forget us and never will.

Acts 17:28 "For in him we live, and move, and have our being…”