January 20, 2020 – Click here to listen
Yesterday I flew to Atlanta for our Jesus Alliance Board meeting. My plane was 2 ½ hours late but time passed quickly, and I made it just fine. When I left the temperature was in the high 70’s and when I arrived in Atlanta it was so cold, I thought I would bite off my lip from shaking. People think I’m strange because I like the heat and humidity; I think they are strange because they like frigid weather.
The majority of my friends in south Florida are northern migrants, many of which come from New Jersey. They have weird accents and yet, lo and behold they say I have a weird accent.
I recently went to the Bahamas and when I checked in at customs, since I was the captain of the vessel, I had to fill out numerous forms asking the same information over and over. Every form had my nationality on it. A doctor told me one time I was descended from the Vikings due to my having a condition on my hands called Dupres disease. I wondered what they might say if I put down that I was a Viking. I just put down USA and left it at that.
There are those in the world who hate anyone who is not like them. Shite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims; the Irish Protestants kill the Irish Catholics; Africans are as tribal as it comes and warring factions perform genocide; Russians, Asians and so on all have their own tribal mess. Mexico persecutes Christians as do many other countries all over the world simply because they are of another faith. What used to make the USA unique is that we took in and assimilated peoples from all over the world. But then people began to get tribal and separated into groups like themselves. Whites, blacks, browns, all seemed to want to be with their own. Politics turned ugly with partisan wrangling; even church denominations went bonkers demanding that everyone subscribe to their belief system.
Now we have bitterness, hate, and unprecedented division. Now imagine heaven for a moment. Color, politics, customs, and traditions will be no more. We will worship one God who loves us all equally. No wars will occur, no one will be lying, coveting, stealing, berating, looking down on, resenting, or otherwise looking for division.
Just peace beyond human understanding. We might as well start practicing now because some of us need an awful lot of work. As I thought about heaven, I said to myself “I look forward to not having any Democrats to contend with.” Hmmm It seems I need more work than most. The world doesn’t need more like me, but more like God.
1 Peter 2:23
“When he was insulted, he did not answer back with an insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but placed his hope in God . . . It is by his wounds that you have been healed”