Unify

Good afternoon everybody and thanks once again for coming!

I have been brainstorming about things to write about, but it seems to me that the most meaningful things to write about are the things that really spur deep emotion and thought, not just anything you can come up with off the top of your head. Today I came across a news story that was really actually quite awful (but when does the news ever report anything we LIKE to hear?). I will post a link to the specific news article on here, although I'm not sure if it will be displayed or how long it will be accessible.

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/mother-drives-5-week-old-top-car-164426051--abc-news-topstories.html

In case you are unable to access the news report for any reason, I will sum up the happenings for you all right here. Basically what happened is a mother was out partying with friends and the father. They all smoked marijuana and brought the baby along and the father was arrested that night for DUI while he was driving to purchase alcohol and he had the baby in the car. The mother was reportedly upset by arrest of her baby's father and so she coped the only way she knew how - doing more drugs and drinking with her best friends. As the night was winding down, the mother decided to leave the party so she put the baby in the car seat and set the car seat on top of the car. Have you ever set something - perhaps a cup of coffee or soda - on top of your car while you fished your keys out of your pocket or bag and forgot you had placed your beverage on top of the car and you drove off? Well it had apparently slipped this mother's mind that she set her own child on top of the car and she drove away nonchalantly and baby goes tumbling down onto the public roadway. At this point I am pleased to inform you all that by the grace of God the baby is okay and was rescued before any harm could come to him.

Today I'd like to focus on something OTHER than the news story itself and I will tie it all together at the end so bear with me here. What got me so upset was when I was reading through the comments people around the USA posted on this news blog. While reading through some of the comments I realized that the content of the majority of the comments was not even based on the actual story itself, but it essentially turned into a debate on the presence (or lack thereof) of God. I don't know about you my brothers and sisters, but I feel that there is something incredibly wrong with the fact that when somebody thanks God for being with this child and protecting him, that person gets called out and virtually persecuted and textually assaulted. There is an option to rate comments either up for good or down for bad, and I noticed that a good amount of the comments that proclaimed thanks and praise to God got rated down by the majority.

It truly does break my heart that humankind is slowly drifting away in a river whose current leads only to their certain demise. Families get separated, church on Sunday has gone from an absolute necessity to "maybe I'll go... but only if it is Easter or Christmas and only if I'm not too busy...". Reading the Bible has become too much work; praying to God has gone from proclaiming His glory and giving thanks as well as asking for His advice and His help to only asking Him to get you a better job or to bring you more money or to get you out of any uneasy situation. Mention of the name of Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit anywhere other than church is almost a crime in a nation that was founded "ONE NATION UNDER GOD". I was telling one of my brothers (not by blood but through God), that as time progresses, humankind regresses. He was trying to start a political debate with me. We all know the debate - liberals vs. conservatives - bashing each other and pointing fingers at each other and instilling hatred and thus occurs separation. I find it sad that just maybe half a century ago (though I wasn't yet born), church was almost mandatory, families were closer, businesses were closed on Sundays, the name of God was still in the pledge of allegiance, etc., etc., the list can go on. What is it that went so wrong? It started with people maybe skipping one day of church to just relax or maybe go have a picnic and do something fun then slowly progressed to maybe justifying only going once every other week or so (I mean you're still going, right? What's the harm in missing 2 services a month?) It went from skipping a couple services a month, to just becoming lazy but maybe still saying a prayer a day. Then since they no longer had the church community around them to support their spiritual growth, they got rid of prayer altogether unless there was some sort of a crisis. Can you see how as time progressed we have truly regressed?

Now look at what we have in our current day. We have people at each other's throats arguing over which political party is right (though they never look at the negatives in the party they support... that'd be too inconvenient and uncomfortable). Politics and religion are the two topics we now must never discuss, because it only causes arguments... Convenient, hm? The arguments lead to disagreements, the disagreements lead to us speaking down of our brothers and sisters, speaking down of our brothers and sisters leads to further arguing and then eventually to complete separation and loss of a companionship. This is a tragedy. I'd like to go back and refer to one of the comments on this news blog in particular. One person had stated something along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Thank God that the baby is okay? Why is it that you think God has saved this baby when there are so many other children out there starving to death, suffering, getting beaten and abused by neglectful parents. Is God doing anything for those children? He saves one but He turns a blind eye to all these others?" I could not believe what I was reading when I read that comment. I was absolutely and completely shocked. To make it even worse for me, they had about 40 people rate it as a thumbs up and only about half of that rate it thumbs down.

I'm here to propose a theory to all of you today for those of you who are still reading. God HAS saved that baby and He does deserve the praise for doing so. This baby had angels surrounding him and protecting him and he has a specific purpose and God has a plan for this child. But does that mean God is responsible for the suffering and pain and death of all these other children? I resent that even as an idea. I believe that the only reason there is the possibility for those children to go through those trials and suffer and even lose their lives is because humankind has regressed so far and have taken it to those extremes. I believe it is because God is no longer regarded as the only way and God is not feared among humankind. We are to blame, brothers and sisters, not God. Humankind has abused their gift of free will and they chose to remove Him from everything that He has given us by His grace and mercy. It is as if we have received say a new car as a gift from our parents and then we have pridefully snatched the keys out of their hands and drove off without even saying "Thank you, mom and dad".

I'm going to leave you all with that this afternoon and I really hope that - if anything at all - you think about the ways in which you interact with your fellow brothers and sisters. What we need is unity. The hateful arguments about politics or religion or ethics should all be disregarded and engage in your conversations with love for one another and caring, and brotherhood. Where there is unity, God commands His blessing. (Psalm 133).