Our World Aflame Part Two: Amazing Mess

Our world has become an amazing mess. Like some horrendous nightmare that will not go away, this summer of 2016 has become more than the summer our next presidential candidates are chosen, more than the summer of the Olympics, more than a fun time of vacations to amazing destinations. This summer–this year, has become the summer death, violence, and hatred, when we turn on the daily news to see where people have died today. Where will it end? What does it mean? What can I do when our world is aflame?

 

 

2MefromHim Devotionals

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

“I knew I should look away, Mom, but I couldn’t. The human body is amazing, even when it’s a mess.”

My paramedic daughter may not remember uttering those words, but they remain seared in my memory along with snapshots of my own nursing career. Human life is as amazing as the world we live in—one tiny speck in an infinite universe man only pretends to comprehend.

To stand in the operating theater as a surgeon holds a beating heart, rib cage spread, lungs like bellows, filling and emptying, is to glimpse the intricacy knit together by a loving Creator God, the Master of incredible design.

God spoke the rest of creation into being. He formed man with His own hands, “in the image and likeness of God”. Genesis 2 reveals a tender, loving, Father God on His knees, fashioning man from the dust. Satisfied, the Creator placed one hand beneath the neck, lifting ever so tenderly as His other hand pressed gently back on the forehead, and breathed into the nostrils—the breath of life.

If man crawled out of some primordial soup, a random consequence of the right combination of chemicals, there is no meaning, and therefore, no accountability. In such a scenario, human beings have no more worth than an amoeba. No lives would matter. Nothing we do would be of consequence.

Jeffrey Dahmer, serial murderer and cannibal, said, “If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing” (Interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.) And most of the world agrees.

1 Corinthians 11:7 says man is “the image and glory of God”, and therefore, we have purpose. Genesis 2:15 reads, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Verse 19 says God brought all the birds and animals “to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” Plan. Purpose.

At times, individuals struggle over the meaning and value of life. Our world is aflame with hate, murder, selfishness, and greed. Lacking understanding of purposeful existence, with no God to demonstrate how to live well, it makes no difference what atrocities men perpetrate on their fellow man. It becomes easy to commit mayhem and annihilation—to obliterate law, order, and destroy civilization, as we know it. When there is no understanding of divine significance, people believe the lie that taking one’s own life in order to destroy as many others as possible is acceptable, even heroic.

When men lose sight of God, any meaning life might have beyond fulfillment of mercenary and mindless desires becomes incomprehensible to them.

However, God revealed His purpose for man between the pages of Genesis and Revelation, that book considered by enlightened people to be archaic and meaningless. Man is to procreate and fill the earth, to rule justly over the rest of creation and subdue it, to be loving stewards of all God made. Lawlessness, avarice, destruction, and self-aggrandizement are condemned. Selflessness, sacrifice, service, and love are exalted, and in that, man’s life takes on glorious meaning and fulfillment.

In spite of the ignorance of the one true God, man is amazing in his aptitude for evil. When an encounter with Jesus Christ changes the heart, human beings once again become amazing in their potential for good.

If I allow God to reveal my individual purpose, He will also give me love for my lost and searching fellow man. What can I do to help transform humankind from a mess back into amazing? What part can I play in showing that all life matters from conception to death? It requires a return to the basics—and acceptance of “In the beginning, God …”

© Copyright by Norma Gail Thurston Holtman, July 15, 2016

About the author: 

Norma Gail is the author of the contemporary Christian romance, Land of My Dreams. A women’s Bible study leader for over 21 years, her devotionals and poetry have appeared at ChristianDevotions.us, the Stitches Thru Time blog, and in “The Secret Place.” She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Romance Writers of America, and the New Mexico Christian Novelists. Norma is a former RN who lives in the mountains of New Mexico with her husband of 40 years. They have two adult children.

Connect with Norma:

Website: www.normagail.org

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Book Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Land-My-Dreams-Norma-Gail/dp/1941103170

Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas Bookstore: http:// lpcbooks.com/product/land-of-my-dreams/

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/land-of-my-dreams-norma-gail/1119606864?ean=9781941103173