The World is Shaking

Not only is America shaking, but the world at large seems to be shaking:

• London is being shaken by the lawlessness on it’s streets.
• Complete economic uncertainty in the global markets. (Read the paper!)
• Countries on the verge of financial chaos: Greece, Italy, Spain, France.
• Somali militiamen are attacking refugees fleeing famine into Kenya.
  
• Norway has been shaken by sheer evil unleashed against innocent children.
• Japan has been shaken by the enormous earthquake, the resulting tsunami, and the horrific nuclear meltdown.
• The people of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen have been shaken this year by dramatic and unexpected revolutions throughout the Arab world.
• Iran has been shaken by the enormous pro-democracy movements that took the streets but was then nearly crushed by the tyrannical government in Tehran.
• Israel have been shaken by fears that Iran is rapidly closing in on building nuclear weapons and the world is not doing nearly enough to stop them in time.

Who can forget,

• The horrors of 9/11?
• Hurricane Katrina – a Cat 5 storm that took out an entire US city? And then there was Rita and 5 that hit Florida in a 2 mos time span?
• The 9.0 Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004 that brought TOTAL disaster and devastation in 11 surrounding countries. The energy of this earthquake is said to have had the energy of 23,000 atomic bombs.
• The Haiti earthquake in January of 2010.

What if these events are not random at all? What if God is allowing these things to shake us, to wake us, to get our attention? That we might turn to Him and ask Him to have mercy on us and help us?

Birth Pains… If you’ve ever given birth to a child, who can forget the pain involved in giving birth to a child? The contractions of giving birth start far apart. As the time gets closer for the baby to be born, contractions get closer together.

Jesus is coming back to the earth one day. Just as there was a beginning of time – there will be an end of time as well. (Told you it would take courage to read these posts.)

I firmly believe what we are seeing in the world are birth pains. Jesus says in Matthew 24:7, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

Is all of this new to you? Does this sound maddening? We have 2 choices…

1. We can ascribe madness to someone like me and keep our heads buried in the sand – hoping and praying for political, social or economic change to solve all of our problems so that things can be the way they used to be.

or

2. We can open our eyes. Start connecting dots to what the Bible says to what is happening in our world/country today. We can look up to heaven and say, “What God? You have my attention.” (We’ll go here next week.)

When you give birth – there’s a lull between the contractions. During this lull – you feel fine for the most part. And then the contraction comes on again. Sometimes stronger than before. Don’t be lulled to sleep (spiritually) between contractions.

Next week: These contractions are making life hard – sometimes unbearable – to many, many people. How are we to respond? How as we as women to respond? What is the importance of our role?

Have a great weekend-

(Note: Bullets 5-9 from Joel Rosenberg: 7/27/11)