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Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
-Psalm 27:14 (NIV)
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
-John 16:33 (NIV)
“The only constant in life Is change” is a quote attributed to Heraclitus a philosopher who predated Socrates in 500 BC. Many of you may recognize it, or if you had not can surely relate to it. How our lives and the world we live in can change so quickly, one day it looks like the two year pandemic is finally receding and life can return to normal, yet the next day, a totalitarian dictator can bring the world to the edge of disaster waging an unprovoked war on a sovereign nation and his Slavic brothers and sisters. While the US and government and NATO are helping by providing aide, we are not able to help as much as we should for fear of a wider war. With all our modern communication technology and social media, it almost seems like we are there with the Ukrainians in their suffering. After 20 years of our own wars in the middle east, we all yearn for peace.
In the Wednesday Shepherds Men’s group, we have been reading and studying a book by Max Lucado titled “You were Made for this Moment”. Max’s book is about Esther in the Bible, a story of two Jews: Queen Esther and Mordecai saving the Jewish nation while exiled in Persia from a madman. Max in his book shares an interesting story. In 1892 the boll weevil arrived in Alabama from Mexico, by the 1920s, the pest was destroying most of the cotton crop in the south and could not be eradicated. In 1916 on a trip through Virginia and South Carolina a seed seller by the name of H.M. Sessions learned that peanuts were impervious to the boll weevil. So, he came home and sold the seeds and by 1919, Alabama became the largest producer of peanuts in the nation. Max makes the observation, had there been no boll weevil there would have been no peanut harvest.
Sometimes we tend to forget that God is for us, not against us. God is near us, not away from us and lives within us. We have to try and not be done in by bad news. We have a good God, that has a good plan, and it is revealed in his good book. We all want peace in this world, but the only true peace comes through Jesus. Jesus is the only constant in life and as prophesied in Isaiah 9:7, “Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
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