Where are the Prophets?

There is an interesting verse in the Proverbs that says; “Where there is no vision, the people perish...” (29:18), its parallel is in Psalms 74:9 as it says “We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, nor is there any among us who knows how long.”

I find in our current day that the crises seem to keep coming and that there is so often a knee jerk reaction from the leadership of the world. We endured in 2009 the banking crisis in which the governments dumped trillions of a variety of currencies at the banks only for them to give themselves massive bonuses for getting the world economy in such massive trouble. We saw and heard about the Copenhagen mess about 'Climate Change', which is an absolute joke of a topic in the first place if you read the Express article “Climate Change is Natural: 100 Reasons Why”, but getting off topic a bit and we see that the concern is the CO2 being dumped in to the atmosphere and how did the folk all get to Denmark? OH yeah, by carbon burning and CO2 producing vehicles and air craft... the participants and protestors probably made the most pollution in the world for that two week period...

Do we even want to go to the Nobel Peace prize recipient who’s only claim to fame is he is President of the USA? MPs that won’t change a system of benefits that amount to as much or more income than the average salary earned in the UK. Renewable energy folk protesting the clean wind and wave power they say they want... And the list goes on and on. Yet it seems there are none who have real answers to these challenges in our world as we start the New Year, even a new Decade. The answer it appears is more everything but nothing of substance. Nobody it appears is thinking long term, but rather trying to react to the polls and stay popular for the moment.

So what do we do? What can we do? Well the truth is if I really knew the answer to the mess I could write the book and save the world. So I guess I am not much help in saving the world, all I can do is try to affect the small part of the world around me. Try to make a difference in the lives of my friends and family, maybe at some level in the bigger picture of the City of Brechin. But maybe if we all get a sense of our own footprints and maybe for some of us a slightly bigger picture of what is outside our window we might at least make a difference in a small part of our world and in the end if enough of us do a little bit it adds up to something way bigger. It is that salary of a penny a day for a month doubled or £1000 a day situation where we all know that the penny doubled is the best way to go at the end of the month. Just doesn’t seem so to start. (Check out a movie ‘Play it Forward’ as well.) This brings us to Ecclesiastes 4:9-13 which points out; that if one is good, two is better and says a threefold cord is not quickly broken and ends with “better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king...” Let us work together in wisdom every chance we get, and maybe we can make a difference.

Rev. Jon Bergen

Thinking into the New Year

Hard to believe how fast the year 2009 has flown by. And now we are already into 2010. That double '0' was easier to type but we'll get used to the new one before it is all done. A lot has happened since the last post on the blog took place at the end of August. I wonder if all bloggers have this challenge of trying to keep something posted and up to date? I suppose so as one of my regular reads took a break and went to the archives to keep posts on theirs daily. My problem is that I haven't done enough years of this to have an archive to draw from.

So that brings me to resolutions for 2010 and the long list of things I should work on, but it seems year to year that I keep trying to make the same ones; lose weight, get organized, be nicer to the folk around me, read my Bible every day just for fun and not just for study, be a better dad, a better husband, a better sibling/son... and on and on the list goes... But like you and 6 billion others on this planet I seem to get a nice start and then I get busy and miss a day or three and that turns into a week or four and suddenly I am too far behind to catch up so start looking forward to the next New Year to start over. But the older I get the more I realise what others told me when I really was young that time flies and it seems 2009 just flew by.

So I hope to develop the gift that I want to develop of writing more and hopefully will have some things of worth to share and pass on as the year goes by. I do have several 'Thoughts for the Week' that I can put here as I do them. Some of the better ones that others write I will either quote or get a link to. Then also I can do wee short glimpses of Sunday messages here as well... so we shall see what happens and then there is the whole Twitter thing... but I am not known for saying things in less than 140 characters so not a good venue for me... LOL

So here is to a good New Year and keeping some basic resolutions as 2010 flies past...

Jon