Have We Forgotten?

A thought-provoking edition of Keil's Comments:  The Blog today.

I was thinking about the church shooting that occurred in Charleston, SC this past week.  Without giving too much attention to the screwball who committed the murders and unless he accepted the families' forgiveness, forever sealed his fate in Hell,..I was thinking about the location of this shooting.  Yes, it is an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church.  Yes, that particular congregation is predominately black.  But a pic that I posted the other day caught my attention. It features a quote by Sam Emory, who turns out (thanks to a Google search) pastors a church in Merced, CA.

There's no such thing for me as a black church.  There's no such thing for me as a white church.  The Church don't have no color.  The only color the Church is is Red because of the Blood of Jesus Christ

Have we forgotten the song that we were taught growing up in church (I added the bold italics emphasis)...

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world

Red and Yellow, Black and White...they are precious in His sight

 Since when have we as a nation forgotten that particular song? Whatever your "shade of Melanin" is, if you are a part of the Church (emphasis on the capital C) that means you are my Brother or Sister. Doctrinal differences aside, we have one major goal in mind...to keep the Main Thing the main thing, that is to bring people to Christ.  This shooting could have happened anywhere.  It could have happened in an Assemblies of God church.  It could have happened in the Lutheran church.  It could have happened in San Jose. God forbid, it could have happened here in Clinton, OK.

And I'm not about to debate whether we should have tighter gun control laws...that's not important right now. What is important is we have brothers and sisters in South Carolina that are hurting because 9 of their friends/family members went to meet Jesus...some of them probably before they expected. What we need to do as part of the Body is to minister to those who are hurting...maybe not physically go to Charleston but through prayer and standing up to the enemy (remember, "our fight is not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness in this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places" -- Ephesians 6:12) and say "NO MORE"!!!

 

 

The Rest of the Story (an homage to Paul Harvey)

Before I get started on this blog post, I want to let you know that I have started...
Keil's Comments: The Podcast

...so if I have some things to comment on about stories during the week among other things I can download them on there.  I even devote a segment to expounding my thoughts on what I write. I usually try to record on Friday or Saturday to be up by Monday and it is Family Friendly too so you don't have to worry about me dropping any F bombs or anything.

Now that the blatant shilling's out of the way, on to today's post.  Yes, I paid an homage to Paul Harvey with today's title because of something that I was reading on my YouVersion app.

I am doing this reading plan on YouVersion where you read through the Bible in a year (from the New Living Translation) and one of today's selections was from Acts.  Now, having studied Acts before and hearing our pastor's sermon series on Acts the first few weeks he started at First Christian Church, I thought "ok, this would be easy to skim over".  As it often happens when you study Scripture, something that you might not have seen before kinda gives you an "Aha!" moment.

You all have heard Acts 1:8 quoted thousands of times "But you will receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you.  And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the Earth."  But did you wonder if that was because He was answering a question or He would do something that would later be a staple of a certain 70's TV detective "oh...and one more thing".  Not until I read verses 6 and 7 did I really get "the rest of the story".

All throughout Scripture the Disciples were for lack of a better term bugging Jesus on when He was going to set up his earthly kingdom when time and time again he was referring to a Heavenly Kingdom. In Acts 1:6, they posed the question to Him one last time "Lord, has the time come to free Israel and restore our kingdom?"  Basically they were asking "Are we there yet, Jesus?" I know that John recorded that "Jesus wept", but do you think He may have done a few facepalms too?

Anyway, He told them in verse 7 "The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know."  Translation: "That's a 'need-to-know' and you don't need to know. But once you get filled with the Holy Spirit, then you must go tell everyone everywhere (the Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria thing) what all you have seen the last three-plus years so they can tell others and keep the Message going". And then as you know He then ascended to Heaven and is seated at God's Right Hand and it took a couple of angels to tell the Disciples "um, guys...what are you looking at the sky for?  He'll come back the same way He went up.  You've got your 'marching orders', now Go!!!" (RJK Paraphrase)

Anyway, just thought I would share that.   That is it for now.  Like I said you will probably hear me expound on this during the podcast.

Until next time, whether on here or on the podcast...Later!!!