And...2018?

Where are we ... and where do we go?

We are here, whether we like it or not, in the year 2018.
Ahead of us stretches uncharted territory - some things we can control and some we cannot.

One thing is certain, the journey leads to a destination, and we will not be where we are today at the year's end.
Either our journey will have ended, or it will find us in a different place than today.

Another thing certain is that the issues before us are of far, far more weight than is to be seen on the surface of things... and how many does God find who are willing to seek beyond the surface?

The world around us is on a downward path.
Men have dared to tamper with the fundamentals.  
Our values have been changed,  the meaning of words has redefined and we have entered a wasteland of chaos...  and now we are finding that the harvest of our sowing is upon us.

Some of the saddest words in Scripture are found in Revelation 3.17
"thou sayest, I am rich...have need of nothing; and knowest not..."

In this New Year it is a time to forget the past and to reach out, and out, and out, until we come to a place of understanding and of transformation - a place where we find our unassailable spiritual possessions in the Kingdom of God....
unless Heaven invades earth Hell surely will.

When we reach our final Destination there will be Light without any mixture of darkness.
Life will not be mixed with suffering there, and  nothing will be broken there, and all that destroys will be done away.

Going forward let us cry for freedom from this earth's constraints...to find our portion "on earth as it is in Heaven."

                "Look not now on earth's horizons,
                 Cramped, polluted, never free,
                 Lift thine eyes from things surrounding,
                 Gaze upon Eternity."

Only One Thing

Our world has entered the year 2018.

It has also entered a sad darkness of unknown dimensions.

The darkness which hangs over our civilization is not the darkness of a cloud which will soon pass away...it is the ever deepening darkness of night... a time of increasing despair, and decreasing hope.

Was there ever an age so blind, so trivial as ours?
We fret about trifles, and feed on low-rate emotions.
Time escapes us and vanishes like a rain drop spattering on the pavement.
The world around us has exalted the things which are perverted and grotesque.
Cisterns have been dug and the fountain of living waters forsaken. Jer. 2.13

Almost five hundred years ago Francis Xavier wrote from the lands of the east that he wished to return to the place of his studies and go through the halls of learning crying like a madman ... crying against the waste of learning which was not yoked to the purposes of the kingdom of God.
What would he say today?
More to the point, what does God say today?

For the child of God at this time there is one supreme need, and nothing else...it is a time to plead for Life.
It is a time to seek with all our hearts that Life which alone has the power to quicken and to overcome.
We don't need another "prayer."
We need, as the Psalmist says, to 'pour out our hearts before Him' lest we lose that Life which God would give us.