Keith’s Quill – July 2020

We are getting ready this week to celebrate our Independence as a nation. It seems like only a while back that I was graduating from seminary in 1976. It was the bi-centennial year. I still have a bag of bi-centennial money that I collected during that year and a few years beyond. That two hundredth year anniversary has now come to be two hundred and forty-four. Those years have seen our country live through a lot. We have made tremendous progress in some areas. Who would have thought you could talk to someone around the world from just about anywhere else. The internet is still a puzzle to most of us, but we use it every day and would be lost without it. Very few if any knew. How could we have imagined that sitting in Moab, Utah we could order most anything for sale and have it delivered to our door in two days. Most of us are not good at photography, yet most all of us can now take a great picture using a phone. That picture can be sent anywhere to another phone or computer instantly. Who knew that we would be able to chat with our family and watch our grandchildren take their first steps live and in beautiful color right from our couch hundreds of miles away? Who would have thought when I graduated from seminary that all the books I could possible ever want to read or study would be available on my computer screen or on my phone? And just think that you can have any word spelled for you and about any bit of information you might desire just by asking a little digital assistant we call Alexa. Or for that matter, Googling it. I have satellite receiver in my car and in my house. And they are not very large dishes anymore but very capable of amazing things. Yet with all these advancements we are still struggling to have a civil discussion on anything the slight bit controversial. Technology keeps growing but people keep growing apart. Now we have a problem with a virus that we can’t seem to solve that is tearing us further apart. I might be so bold to write here that forty-four years ago I finished 20 years of school believing that I had the answer to everything. I just knew that Jesus could solve any problem and fix any situation if we would allow Him to do so. I still think so. My pessimism comes from watching so many for so long not turning His direction even when they know they should. Our confidence in our science and technology has taken over our minds and our hearts. When they fail we are so lost! There is hope. We are constantly reminded in Scripture to turn back to the Lord. If we do so He will hear us and heal our hearts. I wonder if our culture might be racing toward a break, but even so we don’t need to be. God can save us one person at a time. We must be born again. The same message that I began with forth-four years ago is still the solution. Without personal faith in Jesus there is really no hope for us. Let’s continue to be the light even if the world hides it’s face from it. Never give up and never give in.
God is transcendent and He will prevail.

-PK