Matt 28:20
I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
The 1989 Armenian earthquake needed only four minutes to flatten the nation and kill thirty thousand people.
Moments after the deadly tremor ceased, a father raced to an elementary school to save his son. When he arrived, he saw that the building had been leveled. Looking at the mass of stones and rubble, he remembered a promise he had made to his child:
No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.
Driven by his own promise, he found the area closest to his son’s room and began to pull back the rocks. Other parents arrived and began sobbing for their children. “It’s too late,” they told the man. “You know they are dead. You can’t help.” Even a police officer encouraged him to give up.
But the father refused. For eight hours, then sixteen, then thirty-two, thirty-six hours he dug. His hands were raw and his energy gone, but he refused to quit.
Finally, after thirty-eight wrenching hours, he pulled back a boulder and heard his son’s voice. He called his boy’s name, “Arman! Arman!” And a voice answered him, “Dad, it’s me!” Then the boy added these priceless words,
I told the other kids not to worry. I told them if you were alive, you’d save me, and when you saved me, they’d be saved, too. Because you promised, ‘No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.’
Excerpted from Dad Time by Max Lucado, copyright Thomas Nelson, 2014.
Are you that deeply secure in the fact that God the Father will always be there for you no matter what your circumstances?
Some people’s actions for the purpose of their own gain . . .
Matt 23:23-24, Luke 11:42
. . . have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done . . .
In bringing about justice and mercy and the love of God, we must remember that it does not take place through wrongdoing (breaking other of God’s commands.)
Ex 20:15
15 "You shall not steal
Eph 4:25-27
25 Therefore, laying aside falsehood, SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE of you WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are members of one another. 26 BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not give the devil an opportunity.
1 John 4:7-9
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God has not left us alone to deal with the Covid-19 virus, to deal with injustice, a lack of mercy and love. He is with you as you struggle with what is going on, not only in our neighborhood, city, state, and country, but the world. Stand firm in truth and pray fervently for the will of God to be poured out upon us.
Pastor Dale