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Combat the "Crunch"!
The events of the last few weeks have been quite a "roller coaster" ride! Financial institutions, that previously have been considered quite robust, have quickly become vulnerable. Governments all over the world now are having to step into the banking sector; to shore up the system and try to keep things going. Everybody is looking for stability and predictability, but we are instead experiencing turmoil and uncertainty. The methods that did seem to have worked in the past, no longer have that "magic" touch. We go for growth and reap recession!
All this falls on top of concerns about climate change and an increasing scarcity of energy sources. Contemporary prophets are claiming that our current society is unsustainable; and even if we could somehow reduce our production of greenhouse gases, we cannot reverse the trend of global warming. The future no longer looks very bright.
Our mechanistic age began in the 17th and 18th centuries, when people began to question the authority of both the Church and God. They began to look to "reason" for the answers to their questions: our bodies, our society and our world were all described in terms of a machine that works according to rules and laws. There are causes and effects; if you do this, then that will happen. If we can find out what those laws are, we will know all the answers; we will be able to control what goes on. My whole career as an electrical engineer depends on my knowing how things should behave, so I can design electrical equipment safely and to do its job properly. Currently scientists are spending billions of pounds on a particle accelerator that they hope will answer some of the basic questions about mass and gravity.
Governments are now elected on the basis of people believing that "they" know how to run the economy, manage the country, make the world a better place, etc. When things go well, they take all the credit; when things go wrong, they look for someone else to blame! What people don't like to believe, is that no-one is in real control, but mathematicians have proved that even the insignificant things that most people dismiss as irrelevant, can come back to haunt you sometime in the future. We usually illustrate this by saying that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazonian rain forest can cause a hurricane capable of devastating New Orleans.
Jesus said that our heavenly Father misses nothing that happens in the world, whether it is a sparrow falling out of its nest, or that he counts the ever decreasing number of hairs in my head. It may well be true that our world is actually just too complicated to be controlled by mere humans! Those who claim to be in control of things, (and indeed those we feel ought to be in control), may have little control over what might happen in the weeks and months to come. It must therefore come as something of a big reassurance for a Christian to know there is a God in Heaven, who both created the world we live in, and holds the things on earth together.
God is unlikely to turn the clock back so that we can be restored to how things were a year ago. He does not promise a "magic wand" to transform debt into prosperity. However, he does promise to come to us wherever we might be, in whatever mess we find ourselves; and walk with us through the problem. Walking with God in our daily life can sometimes be uncomfortable. He may well point out things that we might prefer he didn't notice, but God is not a "Fat Cat" chief executive, out to maximise his personal wealth. God wants to develop a relationship with the people he has created that can be likened to a father – child relationship that we have always dreamed about, but never thought was possible.
So next time the postman drops a bill on your doormat that you'd rather not open, or you watch the breaking news on the television; and realise that things have sunk to even lower depths than were previously thought possible, lift your eyes towards the God who is in Heaven; and give thanks that he really is in control.
With love, Jim.
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