What has happened to Hope?
Forever will I seek the Lord
The Lord Jesus told us to pray in earnest; “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroys, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroy, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” (Mt. 6: 19 - 21).
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet their heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more important than they? Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” (Mt. 6: 25 - 26, 34).
From Matthew following the Sermon on the Mount, through a series of common sense and a directive regarding the results of prayer depending on God’s generosity. How quick we are to neglect his heavenly care for you and I and seek our needs in other ways and places.
“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” (Mt. 7: 24 - 27). Jesus told his listeners more than a parable, it was again a common sense directive to follow his warnings of life and our seeking God’s graces.
Here is wisdom that is at our fingertips, the teaching of life’s most ardent requirements that will save our souls from a plummet that could lead to loss of our souls.
Are we in the middle of an uncertain future with no apparent solution to escape its hold on us? Without the presence of God’s guidance within the doubts of the world’s changing philosophies that are draining the essence of Christian values most of us grew up with, we are headed to a slippery slope of socialistic and then communistic values which will most definitely lead into Marxist beliefs. If the tenets of a one-world economy, religion, and government continue, our future of a dictatorship is not too far away.
The teaching of Jesus as found in Matthew’s Gospel is a sure direction that is meant for the 21st century as well as the 1st. We still have time to change the direction our nation is headed for, but not without God. Please do not allow the philosophy of Marxism to take hold of us that will lead to the destruction of Chriistian values. The future for our children and later generations depends on our choices.
Ralph B. Hathaway