Reverence God--Honor the King

1 Peter 2:17

The Voice (VOICE)

Respect everyone. Love the community of believers. Reverence God. Honor your ruler.

On July 4, 2015, we attended church in Cottonwood, Arizona. For special music we heard a heart-felt rendition of “I’m Proud to Be an American,” a popular country and western patriotic song by Lee Greenwood. The musician followed it with a parallel version, “I’m Proud to Be a Christian,” that lifts up the life and death of Christ and the salvation He provides us. A church elder spoke about miracles in the church from Bible times to today. He sees the hand of God often working through the many triumphs of medical science and making them even more effective and successful. He bore witness to God’s part in his own health struggles and how he received two lungs in a transplant some six years ago. He credits the Lord for his good health today.

[i]

After a brief lunch with our friends in the church we drove up through Navajo and Hopi land toward the quaint town of Cortez in the southwest corner of Colorado. The trip took us through several hundred miles of beautiful Arizona desert, enlivened by the monsoon rains. The sky was cloudy with great thunderstorms on all sides of us. At times we went through an edge of one or another of these spectacular storms. As we drove the last twenty miles, the setting sun shone below all of these storms and illuminated everything with a golden red light. We marveled in this monumental display of God’s fireworks that couldn’t be duplicated by any manmade fireworks display.

We pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot where we planned to sleep that night. As we got out of our pickup, we were welcomed with powerful explosions. Independence Day celebrations were just starting across the street. We pulled down our tail gate, sat on it, and for the next half-hour turned our attention to a great series of fireworks. The monsoon clouds overhead dropped occasional giant raindrops on us while the festive explosions turned the flat bottoms of these clouds into reds, greens, whites, and blues. What an unforgettable day to blend our reverence to God with honor for our ruler!

Lord, we thank You for Your healing hand, Your magnificent power in providing for us, and the unprecedented freedom we have to live our faith.

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[i] https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5295/5535799790_c321372271_b.jpg

Is All Genetic Engineering Safe?

Luke 17:26

New International Version (NIV)

²⁶ “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man.

In Altering the Blueprint: The Ethics of Genetics, “Professor Alexander McCall Smith explores the startling, and occasionally unsettling, ethical choices that humans face now that medical technology has made it possible to guide the hand of creation with increasing levels of precision and purpose.”[i] This comes from a university level course Professor Smith teaches at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.

Humans are becoming extremely resourceful in how they can modify many of the species of plants and animals that we use for our lives. Many voices are calling for avoidance of using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food they eat; in the meantime giant corporations like Monsanto are trying to force the world’s farmer’s to grow only GMOs.

[ii]

Even more difficult decisions are now facing us as we have the ability to breed human babies purely for “spare parts” for defective living humans. For decades in some parts of the world people have used the ability to predict the sex of their children to abort the fetus of the undesired sex. This is causing major social problems including human trafficking.

It seems that very shortly in the future we’ll be able to “enhance” our offspring by genetic engineering using the human genome. With sufficient money we may soon be able to increase the size, strength, intelligence, resistance to disease, and a host of other desirable qualities of our children. Taken to the logical end, this may mean we can produce a super-race who can tyrannize and enslave us. This dismal prospect has already been explored by some science fiction writers.

It may be that God destroyed the long-lived, super-intelligent antediluvians for extensive genetic experimentation. Christ’s prediction in our verse for today may just be trying to tell us that something like this will be an immediate precursor to His second return.

Lord, we pray with John the Revelator, “Even so come Lord Jesus!”[iii]

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[i] A review of the university course taught by McCall-Smith are at http://www.amazon.com/Altering-Blueprint-Ethics-Genetics-University-Level/dp/076075019X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1433767308&sr=1-1&keywords=mccall-smith+altering+the+blueprint

[ii] http://www.theothersideoffood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/gmos.jpg

[iii] Revelation 22:20 KJV

Do It Right the First Time

Genesis 39:19-20

The Voice (VOICE)

¹⁹ When Potiphar heard his wife’s account, his face flushed with anger. ²⁰ So Potiphar, Joseph’s master, put him into prison and locked him up in the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.

In the center of the university business office stood a huge work bench. No one had ever cleaned it, and the pattern of the linoleum covering of the bench could barely be seen because of the filth, grime, stain, grunge, and dirt on it. Workers had obviously spilled their Postum^®, hot chocolate, or root beer while eating their greasy sandwiches on it. No one had ever even wiped it off. All of this had dried on and was camouflaged by pencil traces and erasings, ball point pen marks, and ink spills.

[i]

It was my duty to clean the business offices every night after the day crew had given up and gone home. I would start working about six o’clock in the evening and work through till midnight or much later. When I went back to my room, the offices were always thoroughly cleaned and sparkling when I got done−except for this work bench eyesore.

For well over a year I had waited for someone to say something, suggesting that the horrid thing be cleaned. No one ever did. During the work day it was usually more than half covered with the normal papers and documents of interest. It probably didn’t seem as bad to them as it did to me when I came in.

One night I finally decided I needed to do something about that work bench. I got out the best cleaning chemicals we had. I took the professional grade steel wool and went to work on it. By three o’clock in the morning I had cleaned half of it, and that half looked beautiful. I had classes in the morning, so I went back to my room and caught a few hours of sleep before my morning classes. I figured I would get the other half done the next night.

That afternoon my boss called me in. The university business manager had called him. He was furious that whoever cleaned the offices had only done half of his work. Half of the work bench was still so terribly filthy that it couldn’t be used. He had gone on and on about it until my boss was afraid he might trigger an aneurism.

[ii]

My boss was a prince of a man and extremely understanding. When I told him about the work bench and how it had never, ever been cleaned and how long and hard I had worked on it, he understood. But he knew more about human nature than I did. He recognized that people don’t look at the part well done but only on the part still undone. He taught me a great lesson. As with  Joseph, I had been doing the right thing all along, and it only rose up to bite me.

Thank You, Lord, that You read my heart and motives and understand why I do things and then respond accordingly.

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[i] https://superriska.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/lessons-from-dirt-and-dirty-dishes/

[ii] http://godcenteredmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/mean_boss_aa035791.jpg

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