Week Forty-Four, 2023
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8
The Choluteca bridge is a 484 meters long bridge in Honduras Central America in a region notorious for storms and hurricanes that was built and completed in 1998 by a Japanese firm. The bridge was a modern marvel of engineering designed to withstand powerful forces of nature including storms and hurricane that were prevalent in that region. But within the same year that the bridge was commissioned for use, Honduras was hit by Hurricane ‘Mitch’ which caused considerable damage to the nation and its infrastructure. River Choluteca swelled beyond its boundaries and caused floods in a vast area where almost 7000 people were reported to have lost their lives.
THE CHOLUTECA BRIDGE
Interestingly, several other bridges, roads and infrastructure were damaged, but the Choluteca bridge survived in near perfect condition. More impressively, the Choluteca River had caused the forced floods to carve around it and not under it. The purpose for which the bridge was built therefore became lost as flood waters no longer flowed beneath the bridge which quickly became known as “The Bridge to Nowhere.”
Most often we focus on creating the best immediate stop gap solutions for a given problem forgetting that the problem itself might change. It is imperative for leaders to be flexible enough to understand when to administer change to avoid obsolescence. While the Choluteca bridge was able to withstand storms and remained firmly anchored, the river found a different route instead. That is how storms of life can at times cause us to re-strategize our goals.
The bridge portrays an excellent metaphor for the constant change which is inevitable in our daily lives and of great importance is our ability to adapt to it.
But, there us one constant that never changes….. Jesus, the Christ. That God can be trusted and counted on is a comfort to His people. Knowing He is “the same yesterday and today and forever” reminds us that God was reliable in the past, we can trust Him today, and we can hold fast to the hope that is tomorrow. God has always existed, and He wants us to be part of His kingdom. That means we can trust, rely and depend on Him!
Both Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 13:8 declare that God is the same always and never ever changes. He is always good, always loving, always all-powerful. No matter how this world changes around us, we can trust God is consistent.
The world around us may change, but Jesus is the same today and forever.
SOMETIMES TRUE STORIES
Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our three children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have (nine presently).
What if the problem isn’t that churches are asking too much of their members, but that they aren’t asking nearly enough?
Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. “Workism” reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
A vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and energy from its members. It asks people to prioritize one another over our career, to prioritize prayer and time reading scripture over accomplishment. This may seem like a tough sell in an era of “dechurching.” If people are already leaving—especially if they are leaving because they feel too busy and burned out to attend church regularly—why would they want to be part of a church that asks so much of them?
Although understandable, that isn’t quite the right question. The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.
The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else. American churches have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO, an organization of detached individuals who meet together for religious services that inspire them, provide practical life advice, or offer positive emotional experiences. Too often it has not been a community that through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.
The theologian Stanley Hauerwas captured the problem well when he said that “pastoral care has become obsessed with the personal wounds of people in advanced industrial societies who have discovered that their lives lack meaning.” The difficulty is that many of the wounds and aches provoked by our current order aren’t of a sort that can be managed or life-hacked away. They are resolved only by changing one’s life, by becoming a radically different sort of person belonging to a radically different sort of community. The Atlantic Daily
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Peace, true peace, is found in and through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Peace stems from prayer, from conversations with God. Now prayer doesn’t always stop the drama or the traffic, or the junk in life, but it does give us peace in the storm and hope in the midst of the flames.
It’s through that relationship and through those prayers that we find ourselves at peace when the rest of the world is in a funk. That doesn’t mean that we won’t have a sense of urgency at times and that we won’t show our displeasure over a certain situation. But we will have peace. Peace beyond understanding.
Peace in the fires and storms of life… and peace in the normal day to day.
“Where’s the Peace?” ~ It begins and ends in and with Jesus! Marty Stubblefield
QUOTES YOU CAN USE
What does an abundant life look like? It’s not having all your needs met. It’s having friends who lift you up. It’s having peace through Jesus Christ, in the midst of turmoil. Rich Jensen
You can’t leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution.
There is no greater harm than that of time wasted. Michelangelo
Wherever you go, go with all your heart. Confucius
Thanks to Jesus we have new freedom. Paul Purvis.
I would rather live in Romans 8 than in the garden of Eden, because in the garden there was still sin. D L Moody
For most people the three most important people in our lives are I, me and my. Jim Wilson
A believer need not fear as he is not alone. Stephen Bernard
The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk. Cicero
People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones. Charles Kettering
When you put God first, He takes care of all the rest. Dan Shock
He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered. Prov 28:26
We don’t see who God really is if we don’t spend time in His Word. Andrew Evans
Jesus is not asking us to do what He is not willing to do. Andrew Evans
Worship is about sacrifice, saying yes to God and no to self. Andrew Evans
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. Storm Jameson
Jesus, the greater Moses, brings the blessings of the kingdom and enables the expected obedience of those who follow Him. Edgar Aponte
Insufficient facts always invite danger. Spock
I love bacon because it will wrap around anything. It is basically the duct tape of food.
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. John Ruskin
It is infinitely better to have a few good Men, than many indifferent ones. George Washington
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