Courier

Courier                                     May 2018

Imagine that you are a Captain in the Army in 1862.   Out on the front line, your best method of communication with headquarters is to have runners who go back and forth. Because of the volume of communiqués, you learn to recognize the couriers on sight and turn your full attention to them when they show up. You trust them. Then one afternoon, when you are in full attack, a runner shows up that you have never seen before. The message that he carries says to “stand down” and that means to stop the attack. What would you do? Finally, after taking time to think it through (on the battle field that can be a long two minutes) you decide to send one of your own couriers, and you tell him to come back to you personally.

Today our media has taken on that role. We turn to ones that we trust, especially in troubling times. We think of them as our own. Yet, what is their purpose, their goal? Is it truly to honestly inform us or are they in the shock and awe business so that we “tune back at 9:00” for an update? Who can we really trust for the truth these days?

The instruction book for the battlefield is often forgotten when we reference check what we are to do in specific situations.   Either we think we already know, or we turn to secular volumes to look up strategy. These days, that secular volume may include Googling your question.   The 34,000 potential answers you get are usually not from sources you know, much less from ones that you know you can trust. Rather, we should turn to trusted human counselors and pick up our own battlefield guide – The Bible.

For more than 4,000 years it has been packed with wisdom. There are stories that spin a yarn and weave a lesson through their words. I have yet to find a passage that fails to advise on situations we have today. What more could we expect from God who made everything. His inspired words were meant for our good. God is love. So be alert to the “couriers” in your life that show up. If you don’t know them, or don’t trust them, get good counsel from someone or something that you do know and trust.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” a wise counselor once said. So all the questions have been answered before. Well, except the ones that start with, “My I-phone is doing this now . . . ”

 

 

 

 

 

Not voting is like the Telephone Game. I tell you something and you tell someone else with a little change, twelve iterations later someone (not you) votes on the issue. A Primary Election is your chance to VOTE. Californians please go to the polls on June 5th.