Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Millions of youth in many lands are so confused and disoriented by the social collapse that is enveloping our modern world, that they have no hope of living long. "I'm going nowhere" is their philosophy of life. Often brought up in one-parent families in ghettos, they have been deprived of a healthy sense of self-respect, and hardly know the meaning of the word "love." From babyhood they are merely tolerated, their very existence often resented. This is especially true in the economically depressed urban areas. They hardly view themselves as human beings, and hope is all but extinguished in their souls.
But they often have keen intelligence, and they are indeed human beings in whom has shown that "Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9). How does that Light shine into such darkened hearts and souls? God has many ways to shine it, because His Holy Spirit has not yet forsaken this sinful earth. If Jesus were here in person as when He was with us 2000 years ago, walking the streets of our inner cities, He would discern where there is in some human face the slight evidence of a hunger and thirst for righteousness, as when He talked with the woman at Jacob's well in Samaria. And He would know exactly what to say to awaken hope, to fan into flame that tiny spark of yearning for salvation. He would "know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary" because He would have "wakened morning by morning ... to hear [from His Father the wisdom to know] as the learned" (Isa. 50:4).
No, you and I are not Jesus; but we can learn from Him "how to speak a word in season to him that is weary." It takes more than Seminary training! That "word" will not be legalism, a recital of things the discouraged soul must "do." There will be News of what God has done; assurance that although the person despises himself or herself, God respects him or her, and has already put His arms around them in love, already "made [him or her] accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6).
It's a Big Idea to say to someone who seems hopelessly lost, but we have been expressly commanded to "preach Big Ideas" to any person whom the Lord brings into our orbit of influence. O Lord! (1) Please prepare us, and (2) give us the opportunity. Amen.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 8, 1999.
Copyright © 2012 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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