Saturday, March 21st, 2020.
“These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”
Do you recognize this quote? It was not spoken by a preacher or prophet. It was spoken by president Roosevelt 87 years ago during the great depression. You may recognize the same speech by this more famous line:
“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Though spring normally means more sunshine and more work outside, this spring more people are staying home with the curtains pulled as the daily news report remains grim. They are dark days.
Bible believing Christians are uniquely positioned for such a time as this. When everything is dark is when the God’s word can shine to give hope, light, comfort, and salvation to those who need it. These days it is easier to see that everyone needs those things.
For nearly a century people have become bolder to assert the worthlessness and irrelevance of the book you hold in you hand. Then again, it has been over a century since our country has faced circumstances as dire as this.
Come to find out the so-called worthless book specifically decsribes God’s ministry to a dark and dying world, and you are made ministers of it!
Roosevelt alluded to the Bible half a dozen times in his inaugural address of 1933. These days the Bible is not even considered for rhetorical use. World experts and leaders do not sound like preachers any more. Some seem stricken with fear, others seem without a God to turn to.
Any advice about people’s mental (spiritual) health comes from the faithless psychologists or false relgions. As people are sent home to deal with the dark in the isolation of their homes it becomes apparent that a contagion of fear and an unsound mind has infected more people than the virus itself.
Fear is a spiritual problem. The book God inspired contains spiritual aid and comfort to the fearful, sick, and dying. In dark days we must watch where we are going, taking necessary precautions, but don’t let fear darken your faith.
God’s grace is most glorious precisely in times such as this.
For grace,
Justin “open the curtains and read the book” Johnson