Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
Our on-going Bible lessons assure us that hardships and trials and disappointments are a necessary but effective preparation for the coming of Jesus.
If that is so, many in Southern California are getting a real boost in their spiritual life because hardships and trials are falling all over them as they return to life again after the cataclysmic fires. Even some of those whose houses somehow were spared the flames return to find no electricity and no water. Life has been disrupted.
The traumas are enormous. One lesson seems to be apparent to everyone, Christian or non-Christian: this world is not our home; and the finest house that money can build is nothing more than “a tent” or “tabernacle” in realistic biblical thinking. The media attention this past week has been focused on the palatial mansions consumed like matchsticks.
“What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Jesus asks (Matt. 16:26).
One little girl lived in a house at the end of the road and the neighbors hardly knew they were there. Let’s call her “Mary.” Every night Mary would pray to Jesus (her daddy taught her to pray, thank God), “Dear Jesus, please bless the animals in our forest, the chipmunks, the squirrels, the deer, and keep them safe.”
Whether their modest little home survived, we do not know; but He did answer her prayer.
The deer, for example, the moment they sniff smoke, test the wind to see where it is coming from, and the Lord has already given them legs that can run, and they do. With all the media literature flowing from Southern California, there have been no reports of wild animals overtaken by the flames.
The original copies of the Bible texts had no pictures, of course; but divinely inspired words paint vivid pictures like the one in Psalm 145 of the great God, the heavenly Father of us all, the Ruler of the universe, kneeling with His hands holding some nuts for the wild animals to come and eat out of His hand (vss. 14-16). This is a “picture” that captures children’s attention forever.
Yes, the Bible was written for children!
And those who remember that they are still children at heart understand it best.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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