In the well-known tale, the frog stayed in the pot of water too long and got cooked because the water was heating up imperceptibly. Today we are sitting in a warming ideological pot.  And if we can't explain the meaning of woke, critical race theory and social justice, we are cooking in the pot and don’t know it. Woke thinking is endemic and hard to escape.  Most politicians, educators and media people, either believe it or feel they must go along with the madness.

The woke say that they are now awokened or “enlightened” perhaps by Critical Race Theory, to the evils of Western institutions. CRT is a theory that looks at how race intersects with social stratification, gender, class and nationalities but seemingly has become a criticism against Christians, Christmas, boys’ and girls’ clubs, the Ten Commandments, and an illogical offence at the Christianized development of the world. Woke people believe that they are oppressed victims of others and are offended at everything that gave them wealth, and education, like capitalism, white people, exploration, and colonization. They are even offended at things that gave them life itself, marriage, heterosexuality and carbon dioxide which is only 0.04% of the atmosphere! 

To undo the “evils” of the West’s pioneering history, they want all connections with the past, that give us reason to be proud of our heritage, to be removed. Statues are being taken down or defaced, and books are being removed from libraries. History is being reinterpreted to magnify any abuses committed by the pioneers.

But some people are noticing the temperature rising in the pot. My 10-year-old grandson came home from school and said, “I think they are trying to get us all to hate the colonialists from Britain, but they forget they brought us the Gospel of Jesus.” Exactly, while there have been obvious abuses during modernization, they ignore completely the benefits they inherited, of transport, technology, governance, science, health, and Christian missions. The gospel light brought an end to murder and mayhem among the Māori who became believers and delivered untold millions from the spiritual darkness of paganism around the world.

Those who are truly awake, know who the real oppressor is. Satan has colonized the earth and has oppressed all mankind. The good news is that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins on the Cross to free us all including the woke, from the oppression of sin and Satan’s rule over us and is now alive to heal and deliver all that will call upon Him.  The same wonderful Jesus that has blessed the whole world spiritually through the Church and materially through the “Christianized West,” continues to save and bless the awakened.

We stood in the darkness in the middle of a village in Punjab waiting for the meeting to begin. There was some scurrying and voices and suddenly the lamps in the village and our sound system bust into life and light. A small girl had climbed up on the highest roof and connected a wire to the mains power line passing over the town!

Many centuries earlier, an angel entered a room with a burst of light causing Joseph to lean back with surprise and a touch of fright. As Joseph thought over what to do about his pregnant fiancée, the angel assured him, “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins." So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: Mat 1:23  "BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD, AND BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME EMMANUEL," which is translated, "God with us"  (Mat 1:21 -23).

What, wait! Did the angel just say call him Jesus when the prophet Isaiah said He should be called Emmanuel (God with us)? Even the two meanings - he will save His people and God is with us, are different, or are they?

No! These are effectively the same thing, for God truly saves us by being with us and within us. Gods’ salvation is not just an accounting write-off of our sins but an impartation of His own divine life. Since human history began, man’s efforts to live up to his creator’s standard has flickered as a candle and failed. Jesus came to live with us and within us as our righteousness, our Life, our Light and our mighty Helper.  Emmanuel saves us by sharing His power with us. The evidence of His presence and power is not falling or shouting or jumping, but being able to live in righteousness, peace and joy. To live in righteousness rather than compromise; to live in peace in the midst of trouble and to maintain joy among difficult people. The fact that He is with us, doesn’t mean there will be no enemies; it means that we are empowered to defeat them.  It doesn’t mean there will be no troubles, but it does mean that we can overcome them and live for a purpose and a mission more important and longer lasting than our troubles.

Friend, Christmas is the celebration of the great day when our Saviour made a new way of living possible for us all. The day He connected us to the “Mains” Enjoy!

In the castle at Jerusalem, there hung an atmosphere of suspense and uncertainty. King David was growing old and weaker by the day, and he had not made it clear who was to succeed him. This lack of clarity exposed the secret designs within the hearts of his servants and his sons. 

God sometimes allows people to get into a position of weakness, to expose the hearts of those around them.  David was now old with family troubles and while the king was at low ebb in his life, his son Absalom arose in rebellion. (2 Sam 15). In contrast, when Saul was weak and vulnerable, David had stopped himself and others rising up against Saul, saying “not to touch the Lords anointed”.

Centuries before, when Moses made decisions that were unacceptable to some, Korah’s corrupt heart was exposed.

When Paul was shipwrecked, his men collected sticks for a fire. As they began to warm themselves by the fire, a snake came out from inside the pile of sticks on fire. It took the fire to reveal the snake amongst the sticks. Pressure and crisis don’t make character flaws, they just reveal them. Friction, heat and differences in opinion between people, never cause character weaknesses either, they just reveal them.

The circumstances of our world and nation, haven’t made people hateful, cruel or intolerant of people with views differing from their own.  The troubles have only exposed the shallowness of our love and the limits of our acceptance.

We support every persons right to their own opinion and defend their right to hold it. We are not those that can only tolerate people that agree with us. Society and civilization can only improve when there is fair and open exchange of ideas.

Friend, our relationships are as good as the test to which it they have been put. Troubles show whether our fruit is real, fire reveals the snakes, and it is the severe scouring of the pot that shows whether the vessel is truly gold or only gilded.

The lepers shuffled slowly toward the outside of the camp, in order to meet the priest who could declare them clean. The lepers in Israel were to live in isolation.

“Then the priest shall examine it; and indeed if the swelling of the sore is reddish-white on his bald head or on his bald forehead, as the appearance of leprosy on the skin of the body, he is a leprous man. He is unclean. The priest shall surely pronounce him unclean; his sore is on his head. “Now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare; and he shall cover his moustache, and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!”’ (Leviticus 13:43-45)

Leprosy is a picture of sin and pride and some believers today end up in isolation with the mark of leprosy on their foreheads, because of pride. Perhaps they couldn’t get their way or took offense in the local church as they became bitter the leprosy of pride broke out in their soul.

Many say that the church let them down; they felt the church didn’t give them a fair go or they felt they should have been given a ministry and now they have taken offense in the wilderness. It’s fair to say that one of the most common reasons people leave church is offense stemming from their own pride, but then something else kicks in – Divine resistance. Would God do that? Absolutely. God is very likely to take his own advice. Cut off one member for the sake to the body? If you find a believer who can’t find a church they can fit in with (tells you straight away they have a problem), it may well be because God is protecting the body from them, till they repent and can fit into a church again. Progress in Gods kingdom is up to God.

Friend, if things are difficult, we might think it is the devil or just a bad year economically, but if you’re in pride, it could be that you are being resisted by God.

The giants and the desert brought out what was lurking in their hearts. The people found fault with Moses and God himself.  It is amazing that there are people who think they can teach God something. (Numbers 14:4-9). They complained about their present circumstances and they complained about their future challenges.  The two men who didn’t complain should have gone in but were hindered by the rest for another forty years. (sobering) The point is that your attitude will keep you in the same circumstance you are complaining about, and until our attitude glorifies God, we may not be delivered.

It is not suffering that glorifies God, (anyone can suffer) but suffering with a right attitude does glorify God.  We do not look for suffering as it will come any way. Jesus suffered gloriously without complaint and with trust. God is looking for us to demonstrate our trust in Him. Our ability to trust is shown by our stability in character.  Some people are positive one day, but the next, they are negative, critical, cynical, and flaky.

Know that God is in charge and He has not changed His good plans and purpose for your life since last week or last year.  Let’s match His faithfulness with some of our own.

In the middle ages, many sons of noblemen were apprenticed to knights. They learned to be knights by wielding weapons and fighting in armour until they were successful in war and were able to guard the house (castle). They became sons of the house through warfare.

Spiritual sons know they are part of an army and they know who their enemy is. Sons understand that, when Jesus defeated the devil, He did it in their name. Jesus never came to earth to prove He was greater than the devil – He’s always been that! He came here to defeat him as a human being on our behalf.  The devil was a strong man who could only keep his goods until a stronger one came upon him. That stronger one is Jesus and His Church!  The enemy is still our foe but now in the presence of the enemy, Jesus provides victory.

King David said “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil;” (Psalm 23:5) There are some things God only puts on the table for us in the presence of our enemies. In other words, most of the times we receive something fresh from God are in the midst of a battle.  In an environment where we need nothing, we receive little. The Christian life is a life of being in need. We should get used to it! We need Jesus every day to live as a Christian. We can’t heal the sick or forgive constantly without Jesus; we can’t cast out devils or defeat our enemies each day, except through Him.

Jesus said to one of the churches in Revelation, “…you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’ – and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. (Revelation 3:17) They had everything they wanted but nothing they truly needed. If we know our true need, God will be our garment, our life, and the anointing we need to see clearly. Sometimes our greatest challenge is to know what we truly need. Like this ancient church group, sometimes we need an enemy to fight!

Friend, to increase in authority there has to be an increase in the challenges we face. God works on the basis that His provision for us is not just sufficient but is more than sufficient for our need and the things we face. If our enemies are a two on the scale, then His grace can be a four. If our troubles are a five, then the strength and more than sufficient anointing that He gives us, will be a seven plus.

Many years ago, my wife and I were in Israel. It was beautiful to be there but surprising in many ways, particularly the philosophy of the kibbutzim. The early settlers to Israel were from Marxist Russia and families continued their community and farm practices, in Israel. With both parents working the collective farm, they had little time with their own children, who were brought up by other workers. All the comrades ate communally, and the children of both sexes had joint showers even up to their teens.

Marx, the founder of communism, hated God and admitted, “My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” The church and the family presented obstacles to his Utopia and the hierarchical society affirmed by Scripture prevented the rise of the proletariat. The Garden of Eden was replaced with “Utopia” and God by the collectivist state. Under communism, all property is communally owned, the state controls all aspects of economic production, and theoretically provides citizens with their necessities, including food, housing, medical care and education.

However, communism has failed everywhere and since Lenin forced his theory upon the Russians in 1917, communism has been responsible for more deaths than Hitler by a huge margin. One hundred million died in Russia, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, China and other places where Marxist socialism was implemented. One estimate says almost half of all martyred Christians since the time of Christ, were killed by communism.

Thankfully, in New Zealand, we are not ruled by communism, but we are affected by socialism, communisms safer cousin. Marx and Engels themselves did not clearly differentiate communism from socialism and modern communists refer to socialism as the first, necessary phase on the way to communism. Under socialism, individuals can still own property, and their socialist goals are pursued through the democratic processes within existing political structures, not by violent revolution.

World over, citizens in democratic nations generally get to vote for parties that seek less government control (liberal-conservative parties, the right) or ones that seek more government control (socialist/green parties, the left). The socialist left claim the moral high ground, promoting social equality and invoking concern for the “disadvantaged” but in modern western nations, both left and right parties have concern for the poor in society. After the first world war politicians from both sides of the house, informed by the Word of God, socialism and British law, created social welfare legislation which protects and assists the vulnerable. Think Michael Savages “Applied Christianity.” While New Zealand and other nations have adopted social programs (state housing, free education, health care, child care), the thing that makes all these semi-socialist states work, is capitalism. Someone needs to make taxable money to pay for the benefits that the more socialist governments give in their attempt to redistribute wealth. We need the government to promote economic growth for business and individuals and both sides of the house will assure us of their intention to do so.

If parties seem much the same, does it really matter who governs? What we are more voting for, is the philosophy that guides the parties. If humanism has replaced Christian thought within the parties, support for the vulnerable may continue, but the morality that informs social policy to do with marriage, abortion, cannabis, gender issues, justice, euthanasia, will have decreased or totally disappeared.

The biggest problem with socialism is not its social programs but its rejection of God. “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” – Karl Marx. Under humanism (the religion behind socialism) there is no god, so there are no absolutes and no moral rules to govern its decisions. Humanism believes that man is inherently good, therefore if a person acts wrongly, they must not have been given the type of society and support they needed from the government. According to socialists "The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time."(Bernie Sanders) In other words, all the world problems can be solved just by spreading money around. A totally materialistic worldview based upon the idea that that salvation or even human good is achieved by the re-distribution of stuff. Jesus asserted the opposite saying that seeking God, not seeking natural things, was the place to begin. (Matthew 6:31-33). Fortunately, all people can be equally blessed with the most important things in life. Jesus said that a full and abundant life comes not from possessions but from a Person.

The next great curse of socialism is its injustice. It often punishes character when it distributes wealth to individuals according to their need, regardless of effort and the reasons for their need. Of course, there are people in genuine need, but the Bible teaches that any able person who refuses to work when it is offered, should be refused aid. Socialism punishes the industrious, taking their “talents” and giving them to those who may never have used the talents that they themselves were given. Socialism spawns from a deep resentment of the bosses and the bourgeois. It does not serve the socialist agenda for a nation to have millions of wealthy people. Only the votes of the people dependent upon the government can be brought by the promise of more benefits. It suits them to grow the needy masses, but we need people who can generate huge amounts of wealth, who own businesses so people have places to work, and we need developers, so we have houses to live in. I notice the ruling socialists have not capped their salary to the level of New Zealand average wage.

Finally, as we ourselves saw in Israel many years ago, socialism from its beginning has sought to destroy marriage and family. Friedrich Engels, the co-author of the "The Communist Manifesto, said that “the society he envisioned would be one where the single-family ceases to be the unit of society and the care and education of the children becomes a public affair.” Essentially, what godless socialism seeks is for the state to replace the family and for the state to decide what religion, philosophy, and morality will be taught our children in our state schools.

It seems obvious to me that we should look for political parties that still honour God, promote wealth in society and protect the family. Surprisingly, a recent Barna poll found that 24% of Americans thought Jesus would prefer socialism and only 12% believed He would prefer capitalism. Probably because Jesus helped and healed the sick and needy but unless you are able to multiply bread from nothing and find money in a fish’s mouth, you will need to have some money if you are going to help your needy neighbour. Two “broke” people cannot help each other. But Jesus is not American, and He does not represent any “ism.” He was not from here and He did not come as a candidate but as the King of Kings. Jesus was inevitably political - He talked about two-kingdoms and asked for allegiance to only one Kingdom - His. His goal was not just to give people bread from the cradle to the grave but to give all people an abundant life now and eternal life beyond the grave.

Around about 1512, the Italian astronomer Copernicus wrote his book shocking the world and the church with the idea that the sun was the centre of our solar system. For the previous 1500 years, since the days of the Greeks, people believed that all celestial bodies revolved around the earth. Both Catholic and Protestants castigated Copernicus as a heretic and Martin Luther even called him a fool but, embarrassingly for the church, Copernicus was proved to be right. It took a while, but it eventually prompted a change of theology with scientific discovery ultimately helping to clarify Scripture.
A few years ago I spoke to a man whose son wanted to study civil engineering but he was told that if his son believed what the church taught him, about the age of the earth, he would never pass the exams. This was relevant to me because I also had studied civil engineering when I left school. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I got saved in a Baptist church, and one night saw a movie they were playing about creation, produced by Ken Ham, which I found brilliant and convincing. He regarded the Bible as a factually inerrant record of natural history. He proposed that the earth was about 10000 years old and believed that the earth and life were created in six 24-hour days. (Hebrew word for the day: Yom) It was clear to me then that my lecturers in geology were wrong about the age of the earth. Now I understood how the geological structures of the earth were created in the great flood and that, although the earth appears old, it was created instantly “mature” like Adam. Men and dinosaurs lived at the same time, and the proof of this found in the fossils record. The “young earth” adherents believe that there was no death at all on the planet until the fall of man.
What I didn't realize (back then) was that there is another group who believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, but also believe that the earth is as old as scientists say. People like the Christian Astrophysicist Hugh Ross, and many conservative theologians, embrace the old-earth idea. People like Francis Schaeffer, R.A. Torrey, Edward J. Young, John Ankerberg, Bill Bright, Chuck Colson, Hank Hanegraaff (Bible Answer Man), Jack Hayford, J.I. Packer, Lee Strobel (author of The Case for Christ ), and Dallas Willard, to name a few.
For them, the word “Yom” need not be a 24hr day but a long period of time, even an “age.” Respected scholar R.A. Torrey says “The use of the word ‘day’ is not limited to twenty-four hours. It is frequently used to denote a period of entirely undefined length…there is no necessity whatsoever for interpreting the days of Genesis 1 as solar days of twenty-four hours long.”
For these “old creation” believers, God created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo) and created life from non-life. He miraculously created the earliest primitive micro-organisms on earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago and then continued to create life through the “days” of creation (long epochs of time), including all plant life, sea and flying creatures, and land animals (including any primitive primates) without any evolution. Finally, God then created humanity’s actual historical parents, Adam and Eve (God’s “crown-jewel” of creation), from whom humanity’s sin originated. (It still could be six to ten thousand years back to Adam.)
Although they believe that Noah’s flood was a judgment on the sins of man, they also believe that the earth’s surface was formed through both rapid catastrophic processes (earthquakes, flash floods) and slow processes (plate tectonics; mountain building; formation of coal, oil, & diamonds; coral reef formation, etc.). Because of the age of the earth “old earthers” believe animal death was part of God’s creation long before Adam fell. Augustine also did not consider animal death to be a direct result of the Fall but that “animals were designed to be the nourishment of other animals. To wish that it were otherwise would not be reasonable”.

A few years later I left the Baptists and joined David McCrackens New Life Church, where he was teaching something different again which would be called the "Gap theory". This "gap" was a huge gap of years between the original creation millions of years ago (Gen 1.1) and the recreation of the earth as described in (Genesis 1.2-31). During this “gap” darkness somehow had come upon the earth but, over six literal 24 hour days, God restored the earth to how we know it today. This idea was very popular in the 1900s and held to by people like Oral Roberts, Cyrus I. Scofield, Arthur Pink, Finis Jennings Dake, and Chuck Missler. For them, the genealogies were complete, and a global flood took place. Earth appears old because it is old and there was death before the fall. By positing such a gap, the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, dinosaurs, fossils, ice cores, ice ages, and geological formations are allowed to have occurred as outlined by science, without contradicting a literal belief in a seven 24hr day “recreation”.
So there we have it, three versions of creation and they all defend their positions strongly with fairly complex reasoning. They cannot all be right, so who is right, and does it really matter? If you are not going to do engineering at university, a 10000-year-old earth will be just fine, and if you are going to study the sciences you have options!
Jesus mentioned Adam and Eve and the flood of Noah, so we can vouch for history back to the garden. Before Adam, timeframes are a little more debatable. This is not an issue of faith, salvation or orthodoxy but of hermeneutics and interpretation. Augustine once wisely wrote, “In matters that are obscure …in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith. In such a case, we should not so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further truth undermines this position, we too fall with it.” Unlike the Church in Copernicus' day, but as Augustine suggests, we should hold our views lightly. All three views are held by godly men seeking to honour God and the reason this means so much to all sides is that we live in a miraculous and wonderful world.
Have you noticed that people sing about love not about science, about beauty not cause? In his signature song, Louis Armstrong does not sing about how old and fertile the ground is, only that the grass is green, and the sky is an amazing blue. When he sees the beauty of red roses and rainbows, and the awesomeness of a mobile god-like creation being able to say “I love you” to another, how the Grand Canyon was formed seems unimportant. Instead, he sung of the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night and he thought to himself what a wonderful world.
The point of the Bible is not to tell us when or how the world was made but who made it and why. And the answer to that we find in Genesis 3, on the last day of creation where God came down in the cool of the evening to walk with His ultimate creation-mankind. God made the world for people who He wanted to love and with whom He wanted to live forever.
Apparently, Copernicus was wrong. The whole universe revolves around God and His greatest love - us!

The number of children involved in sport is falling. Recently six sporting codes agreed the reason was that there is too much emphasis on winning. Maybe it's by pushy parents but I also think kids know that games tend to be based on points and someone has to win. Just imagine if my grandson’s hockey team won 6 to 2, but the organisers then equalled out the score to 4 each so the losing team did not feel sad or oppressed. This point redistribution might cover up the fact that one team didn't practice or put any personal effort into the game but, if that was the case, losing as a team was inevitable and what it should do is motivate them to practice more next week. If they tried hard and still lost, it only points out that teamwork is a skill to be learned or that children’s skill levels cannot all be equal. That is the way life has been forever! And point redistribution would be an injustice!

The idea of social justice has come to mean “putting things right in society,” and campaigners work on a variety of issues like ageism, gender wage gap, girls being kept from education, world hunger and global health outcomes etc. Some Christians think we should just preach the Gospel rather than engage in social justice issues, but other believers feel that social justice was the centre of all that Jesus did. The problem is always that people have different definitions of social justice.
A biblical description of social justice is found in Micah 6:8 ..And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
To Do Justice:
Justice means “rendering impartially and proportionally to every one his due.” Aristotle wrote, “the formal principle of justice is that equals should be treated equally and that unequal’s should be treated unequally”. So, if a man and a woman are working for the same company, with the same training, the same experience, the same diligence and work the same hours etc they should be paid the same; that is justice. If anyone of these factors change (i.e. less hours or less skill), to be paid the same would be an injustice. If an able-bodied person down the road was offered the job and refused to work, preferring to play video games, but still receive a similar “universal wage” that would be an injustice.
The biggest challenge, to treating equals equally, is knowing whether they are indeed equal. The criteria for judging whether two people are equals can never be based on eye colour, race, gender, wealth or social position, for none of that matters in true justice. Rather, the criteria of “equalness” is based on merit, behaviour, achievement, need and the effort they put in, and every case must be judged individually.
Justice is essential, whether it's Commercial justice (people actually getting a quarter pound of meat in their burger), Civil justice (where the guilt or innocence of people is truly determined), and Distributive Justice (where the benefits and burdens are equally shared by those responsible or affected).

Since the late 1800s, there is a new brand of distributive justice called Social justice which is mostly about distributing wealth on a national scale (Socialism). For the reasons of criteria above, it's impossible to provide justice by national legislation or social engineering because everybody's personal situation is different. Justice means that people should have equal opportunity to learn and to earn, but the government is not responsible to ensure that the outcomes for everyone will be equal. Everyone is free to decide how they will spend their income, how much they will save, and where they will live. The effects of their own education and economic decisions is something everyone has to live with. If they forgo spending in their youth, they will have more money later in life but if they spend all their income when they are young, they will pay a financial price later in life.
Generally, the Bible teaches individual responsibility where people work to meet their own needs and the needs of those they love, in fact, the Bible condemns laziness. Jesus told a parable about three men given the same amount of money by their boss. All three showed different levels of diligence and the boss commended the man who increased the boss’s money the most and gave him even more. A distinctly un-socialist concept.

Love Mercy:
But Jesus also told another parable of the Good Samaritan who showed voluntary mercy to a stranger just because he was in need. The early Church showed mercy, meeting the needs of the widows, orphans and poor among them with voluntary gifts (Acts 2:42–47). Showing mercy to those infirmed or unable to work is giving them what they are due just because they are fellow human beings. The Salvation Army in New Zealand has a saying “Justice in society and between societies”. This means seeking to end things like hunger, trafficking, and child abuse in our society and it also means showing mercy to those in other nations who are short of food, water and health resources. Charities like World Vision should be supported, and missions can be more than reaching souls. Mercy is often more important than justice. Instead of receiving Gods just judgment (for our rebellion) we can all be glad we were shown undeserved mercy.
Walk Humbly with Your God:
Finally, social justice is not achieved by walking with Karl Marx but with Jesus. The justice He wants cannot be provided by any person or government and it is always more than economic and social justice. He came to bring freedom from all forms of mental, emotional, religious, and spiritual oppression. His greatest victory was not feeding the 5000 but delivering millions from Satan’s power. Jesus' miracles were not a protest against injustice in human society but a demonstration of the power and provision of His heavenly Society. What He did do was offer hope, not only to the poor but also to the rich, because even people with wealth and status still commit suicide. He preached against life draining religions that offered false hope. He loved everyone because being disadvantaged was not the prerequisite for His love. He was moved even by the hunger of people after a 3-day conference, not just those with malnutrition. He never promoted a social justice where everyone has the same outcome in this life. This is the fantasy of those seeking a Marxist utopia. People with no hope of a just eternity will always think it right to even out the available treasures and pleasures of earth. But Gods accounts are not made up on the 20th of the month. The first now may be last in Gods kingdom and vice versa. Let us just be sure we are in His kingdom.

As disciples, we are to do justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We can start by making sure we “give the full quarter-pound” to our customers and by not passing by the neighbour in need on the other side of the street. Some people are capable and called to make a big difference to a lot of people in society, the rest of us are called to make a difference to a few. We do not need to look for great things to do but to do some small things with great mercy.