The Backside of the Superbowl & the front end of the Gospel

Something To Think About Opportunities:

I'll be watching the big football game on Monday morning.  I just mixed up a batch of muffins for Superbowl breakfast and I’m waiting for some friends to come over.  When I mentioned online that I’d be watching the game this morning, one friend mentioned that I should avoid looking at Facebook, so I wouldn’t see the game’s outcome before I watch it.   No need, the game is live on Monday morning on this side of the globe. It is one of those reminders of how big, and small our world is, all at the same time.  Just this morning I read a note from a friend and colleague who is headed to Germany.  Yesterday I listened to a young man from Germany preach here in Palau.  Oddly I, a guy who only speaks English, preached in the Palauan service while my Deutsche friend spoke in the English service.  The unprecedented ability to circle the world that globalization brings, gives us opportunities never seen before in the history of the world. Well, maybe. In God’s providence, three hundred years before Christ was born, Alexanderconquered the Mediterranean world, and beyond.  Because of him from Spain to well into the Middle East, from Africa to Southern Europe, people understood—many spoke—Greek.  The Romans had established a system of roads unlike anything the world had seen before, or would see again for more than a thousand years, and they established a reign of peace that was likewise unprecedented.  By the time the last Apostle, John had died, the Gospel had penetrated Africa, all of the Mediterranean nations, as far east as India, and some say as far north as England.    We are still profiting from the incredible effort of that first hundred years. In the First Century of the Third Millennium we have opportunities that are greater than any since that first explosive hundred years.  I’ll enjoy the Superbowl with my friends, but as I, in Palau, watched soldiers standing at attention in Afghanistan, and heard fans in California cheer for them, I ask myself, what are we, the prosperous, wired and frequently flying body of Christ doing with what God, in His providence, has given us.   It’s STTA.