There she sat, calmly looking at us through the glass door of our woodstove. She did not seem upset and obviously had no idea of her precarious situation. She was a sparrow that had come down the stovepipe into our family room. The odds on her finding her way back up the pipe and out to freedom seemed very minimal. My wife rescued her and set her free. The last we saw her was on a branch of a Japanese maple.
We live in a world rife with weapons designed to kill millions. There are groups who think they will be doing God a great service if they can use them. How they can think this is beyond my comprehension. Obviously their Allah is not the same God as our loving heavenly Father. The reason is while they think Jesus was a prophet they do not see Him as a duplicate character of our Father. Jesus did say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.”
While I do not want to spread fear and upset the tranquility of our lives, it would be Pollyannaish to ignore reality. No, we should not be having our children jump under their school desks like some of us did in the 60’s. But neither should we be thinking something horrible is impossible. We don’t want to be like a sparrow calmly sitting in a stove. Eternity is a topic worthy of our consideration and Jesus is the one and only hope for a world almost out of control.
We must also remember that Jesus offers us peace. He did say, “Peace I leave with you. . . . Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on August 17, 2015
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org