What the World Needs:

Something To Think About, What the World Needs: 2/28

It's doesn't take a news junkie to see that the world is in a mess.  Words like genocide, refugee, militants, and mass-starvation have become way too familiar over the past few years.  Cities on fire, angry mobs in streets, and children with blank faces and emaciated bodies have become way too common as images that daily assault us.   Luke is a historian.  When we read his gospel and his history of the early church we get some idea of the world in which the Good News about Jesus first made an impression.  It was a world where on one occasion the disciples told Jesus about some  Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  (Luke 13:1)  When you read some of the central chapters of Acts you can see the lines of refugees leaving Jerusalem, persecuted for their faith.     “Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” (Acts 9:1–2)  Luke's friend Peter writes about the struggles of these displaced persons, the victims of religious cleansing, working hard to make a new life in a new place.  Peter addresses them as "Those who reside as aliens." The Roman Empire of 2,000 years ago was not unlike our world today. If we could back to that world we would observe many needs:  People needed housing, food, medical care, and education--again very much like our world. You can't spend much time in the New Testament, though, without coming to the clear understanding that above all those things, and, in many ways, as that which would lead to a solution for those problems, people needed the Lord. They still do. I'm not saying we shouldn't seek to feed the hungry and house the homeless. We should--especially when those in need are helpless children.  What I am saying is we need to make sure we don't neglect what is most important. This bad news world needs to hear THE GOOD NEWS!   It's STTA. Explore this Good News here.