Shall He Find Faith?
November 12, 2000
Dear Friends:
This past week has been a wild one. It is a week after the US presidential election and we still do not know who the winner is. It is not even clear how it will be resolved – in the courts or with a concession or something else.
This past week has made me think long and hard about how incredibly quickly things can change that we take for granted. For two hundred and twenty-four years, this country has operated uniquely in the world in that we have always had a smooth transition of power, including changes in political parties, without significant incident. The US is not Yugoslavia or some central American power where chaos is expected. We expect, in fact demand, that the current chief executive will vacate the White House for the new chief executive.
Yet, we see how quickly God can intervene to create the most incredible, unheard of, nearly impossible circumstances to change things in the twinkling of an eye.
I find it hard to believe that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns that the United States will be the same solid political and economic force that it is today. Yet, perhaps without saying it, we have come to expect that it will. If we woke up tomorrow and President Clinton refused to vacate the White House, we would be in a state of shock. We would feel the same shock if the bottom fell out of the stock market to the same magnitude or more than that of the 1929 crash. We expect to find food at the grocery store. We expect to find gas at the gas station and electricity when we flip on the light switch. It is the way it has always been for most of us alive today in North America.
But what if it wasn’t that way anymore? If these things did come to pass, would we as a community of believers be prepared?
This question is not one of material needs. Would you have enough food stored or money stashed away? That is not the concern. The question is, as a community, would we have enough faith?
We ask the same rhetorical question that Jesus asked in Luke 18:8. “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”
I would suggest that the over abundance of material blessings and stability over the past 50 years has lessened our faithfulness. We don’t look to God to sustain us in our old age. We have our 401Ks and social security. We don’t look for God to feed us. We have Kroger, McDonalds, Dominos and the like to do that. We don’t look for God to protect us. We have police, fire, rescue and armies to do that. We don’t look for God to govern us. We have Washington to do that.
The point is not for us to feel bad about our prosperity nor is it for us to move into the wilderness and become survivalists. Again, the point is one of faith. Where is our faith? When all things fall apart around us – AND EVENTUALLY THEY WILL – what will be our response? Will we be one of those whom is spoken of in Luke 21 with our “hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken?” Or will we be one of those who “when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh?”
I hope and pray we are the latter. But as the hymn says, “we make the answer now.”
“Thy will be done.”
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