Evil--Live Spelt Backwards

 

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Amos 5:14-15 (New International Version)

Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

 

When I was growing up, Americans referred to America as God’s Own Country. There were still people around who remembered the terrible Civil War—a war to banish the terrible evil of slavery. In those days many still believed that God had allowed (or sent) that war to punish Americans for allowing human bondage in God’s Own Country.

By the time I was old enough to remember anything, we had just won the war against Nazism, genocide, and destruction of freedom. America emerged the richest, most powerful nation on earth.

Since that time evil has crept back in. Or has it rushed in? Ideas like “God is dead” and concerted effort to destroy the family as well as the banning of even the mention of God in education and total denial of the devil—the source of all evil—to his great advantage, have gained strength. The sexual revolution, toleration of openly corrupt politicians, and voluntary destruction of over sixty million fetuses compound the negative effects.

The net result is the almost daily shootings in schools; global warming that ravages our environment; increased terror such as caused by the 9-11 attack; invasions, especially along the southern border of our country; embroilment in wars like Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, and Afghanistan, that have killed our young men by the thousands; increasingly vast expenditures on foreign wars.

O, America, we desperately need to search for good and reject evil before it is too late!

Truly we can borrow this prayer from Amos for our situation:
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant in America!

 

 

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[1] https://howmuch.net/articles/most-expensive-wars-us-history

Think Love, Joy, Hope, and Beauty

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Philippians 4:8 

Good News Translation (GNT)

⁸ In conclusion, my friends, fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honorable.

Shortly after I began teaching at La Sierra University, Hilmer Besel came into my office. He was very worried. His wife Lily was in hospital and I knew things were not going well for her. She was naturally very short and her osteoporosis had stolen another 6 inches from her height. Besides that about everything else in her body seemed to have given up. They had her lying in bed with tubes protruding out of almost every orifice. She couldn’t speak, drink, or eat. Everything hurt and she was miserable. She wrote a little note to her beloved husband and requested that they remove all the tubes and let her die in peace. Hilmer asked me what I would do if my wife had made that request.

Lily was a lovely woman. She was always interested in the welfare of those about her. She was a pleasure to talk to. We all hated to see her go. But who would keep such a lovely person alive in such unbearable torture? Hilmer gathered their three daughters around her and prayed with her and then they pulled all of the tubes out of her body and quit giving the life preserving drugs. The doctors told the family that she would be dead in twenty minutes.

Four days later she walked out of the hospital, delighted to be free from most of those pains. She regarded the next four years as a gift from God. When I would see her she was always interested in my well being and expressed no complaints. She had not been miraculously cured and her ailments finally took her about four years later. I remember visiting her again just before she died. She knew her time was short and she expressed her concern for Hilmer. Would I look after him especially when he needed something? I promised her I would.

Hilmer had founded the mathematics and computer science departments at La Sierra University. He ate lunches at the university cafeteria, so he would come by my office almost every day. He spent his time studying scripture, working on an elementary proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, or finishing his copper roof. He would report on progress and often seek my help in one or another of his current projects. Like his wife, he never dwelt on the failings of his fellow humans. He lived a lonely life, but never complained. At his lunch meals, students and faculty would often spend time with him learning from his wisdom. He outlived Lily by almost twenty years.

Thank You Lord for people who love to redirect our thoughts to joys, beauties, and topics beyond our meager existence.

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[1] Hilmer Besel at a Departmental Christmas Party in 2012