Secretary's Soapbox

I was reminded of God’s sense of humour the other day after writing about it in last month’s Soapbox. I always go up to bed at around 8 p.m. and there I have my quiet time surrounded by our dogs. I am reading through “The Message” (the Bible in contemporary language) and I’d been slowly going through Jeremiah and finding it very difficult. Even written in today’s language it seemed to go on forever with warnings from God to His people about what was going to happen to them if they didn’t pull their socks up.

Anyway, as I was undressing I was just asking God to show me the verses that had an important message for me to learn. I have to say that I don’t usually do this but I felt I was missing the point and wanted to be shown that Jeremiah had some thing relevant to me.

So I got comfortable, settled the dogs, opened The Message at the place I had left off the night before and there in front of me, at the start of Jeremiah chapter 49, in bold capital letters, were the words…..

YOU’RE A BROKEN-DOWN HAS-BEEN

I laughed out loud, because here were the words I had asked for! Thanks a lot, God, the joke’s on me.

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I have now gone on to Ezekiel, another prophet, but somehow, his words are jumping off the page and seem to point to everything happening today. In the past few days we have had Parliament first of all voting for the right to produce animal x human embryos, and then keeping the upper abortion limit at 23 weeks, both of these Bills are destined to cheapen human life and cannot be pleasing to God. I have also watched a Dispatches TV programme showing some Christians praying against things that seem to be against the wishes of God, the reporting was so biased against Christians I just couldn’t believe my eyes. What is happening to the world? But of course it was foretold that all these things would happen.

In contrast to my first comments about my difficulty reading God’s Word, last night’s reading really hit me….. It’s from Ezekiel 12 verses 21-25

God’s message came to me: “Son of man, what’s this proverb making the rounds in the land of Israel that says, ‘Everything goes on the same as ever; all the prophetic warnings are false alarms’? “Tell them, ‘God, the Master, says, This proverb’s going to have a short life!’ “Tell them, ‘Time’s about up. Every warning is about to come true. False alarms and easygoing preaching are a thing of the past in the life of Israel. I, God, am doing the speaking. What I say happens. None of what I say is on hold. What I say, I’ll do—and soon, you rebels!’ Decree of God the Master.”