Our home study group, progressing through Revelation, studied chapter 6 last night. To save you having to look it up: This chapter deals with the first 6 (out of 7) seals, specifically the 4 horsemen, plus the plea from the martyrs (5th) and the promised vindication (6th seal).
Along the way we got to talking about drought and famine. Southeast US continues its struggle with drought. Meanwhile the Pacific NW, while not as dry as the former, has endured a number of years of below average precip. And intermixed with these come floods, sometimes right in the area of a drought. Nature has gone or is going whacko!
Part of me rationalizes this as all part of the cycle of nature: Droughts come and they go; Famine comes and goes; plagues come and go; etc., et.c And in a sense that is true.
But it is not Biblical to write it all off as just a cycle of nature. And I believe it is inconsistent with the tradition of Christian and Old Testament believers to dismiss it all as the ways of nature.
Instead, I tend to stand with what I understand to be the position of the OT prophets: To wit, These nature-caused and human-caused events are God's way of calling his people back to him. They are also his way of trying to get the attention of societies that ignore him.
While we talked about this last night, I reverted to what is starting to become a pet theme for me: The growing burden I sense over God's promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14...
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
At some point a few months back, it suddenly occurred to me: This promise is directed to me and to all the other people who call themselves by the name of Christ. I've heard people pray that God would call our nation to repentance so that God could heal the land. Certainly the nation needs to repent. But this promise is not given to a secular nation. It was given to a people inseparably linked to the name and reputation of God.
By extension, we followers of Christ have embraced the promise for us as well. But to embrace the promise is also to embrace the conditions. In other words, if I/we long to see our nation healed... If we yearn to see the violence in our society fade away... If we ache to see natural calamities ebb... Then we must meet certain conditions:
Condition 1: Humble ourselves.
Condition 2: Pray.
Condition 3: Seek God's face (how is that different from prayer?).
Condition 4: Turn from our wicked ways.
So that leads me to the question in the subject line of this post: What would that look like?
What would it look like if we followers of Christ humbled ourselves?
What would it look like if we followers of Christ prayed?
What would it look like if we followers of Christ sought God's face?
What would it look like if we followers of Christ turned from our wicked ways?
And what effect would that have on the world around us?
I have a few unborn ideas. What do you think?
ttfn
1 comment:
Thanks for writing this.
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