Every day we wake up and if we are able to get up and go, it is a day that God has blessed us with!

Debris and devastation from 8.9 Quake, Northern Japan

Good Monday morning. I bid you welcome as we start another work week here on March 14, 2011. Technology has brought us some amazing progress over the past 50 plus years. Our family got our first television set somewhere around 1956. Essentially, we were able to get one channel with a tall external antenna pointed in its direction. We were limited to whatever was showing on that station. This is where we got our news and weather. We could get a few other stations but they were so snowy, it was hard to watch them. Only on certain days when the clouds and all the signals seem to align, we could get one or two other stations clear enough to watch. After hearing about the historic earthquake that hit the east cost of northern Japan, last Friday morning I came into work and immediately called up a 24 hour news TV station live from Tokyo. The live feed images were stunning. I may not have understood the language but the devastation and the faces of panic throughout Japan communicated in real time a remarkable advance in technology. I could also switch over to CNN International to catch the dialogue in English. I could then go live to Hawaii and see the beaches where they were awaiting the threat of a Tsunami. It's called Live Streaming and I could never, as a kid watching Gene Autry on our new TV, have ever imagined this being available and enabled with a few keystrokes. Over the weekend we watched a news station from Japan where they translated into English. May God help is all I can think of as I think about the devastation there, especially the lives lost.

Whether it is Haiti, New Zealand or Japan, or any other place, including here at home, the one common denominator is found in the men, women, girls, and boys who have lost their lives or they have been injured, made homeless, or they are just scared breathless by these calamitous events. I was in a fairly mild earthquake, 6.2, at a conference out in San Diego in the early 1980's. I was in a huge hotel ballroom with several thousand people listening to a speaker when it hit. Never having been in one, it was like the most unbelievable experience one could imagine. Everything began to rock and roll and I couldn't figure out what was happening. Some people began to panic and run for the doors. The only thing I could think of was that a large helicopter must have landed on the roof. My natural response was to grab the chair in front of me. I did. But it was no longer on the floor although there were made a couple hundred hooked together. I later found out that this sensation was caused by the earth rolling underneath the building. We had a major aftershock during the night and I ended up on the floor in my hotel room. I don't know if it threw me out of the bed or I jumped out but it was a very frightening situation. When I returned home I actually scheduled an appointment with a cardiologist because of some chest pain I was having. Scary? You betcha! Now multiply my experience perhaps 1000 times over for what has happened in Japan, and your heart, like mine, will melt as you see the faces of those little ones on the TV screen. We've already heard from some of our missionaries on the island there and they are for the most part safe with only minor damage to property. The people of Japan are no different than people everywhere. They need the Lord God of heaven for their help but only a fraction in Japan profess to believe in Jesus as Savior. We can do what we can do, and that is to pray for them all, and support those who carry the Gospel to people groups all over the globe.

All of this instant communication presents us with tons of instant information but many question whether we are better off for it. Back in the day when I led the large organization at the big company we had a saying for those who were uniformed and clueless. They were said to be, "Fat, dumb, and happy." This was not intended as an attack on their weight or their intellect. It was a statement reflecting their lack of being on top of something or not being informed. I suppose as a kid that was how we grew up because we had zero access or contact with 24 hour instantaneous news feeds. We certainly didn't miss it. Today we have folks who are called news junkies and some admit to being addicted to the 24 hour news cycle. This can cause one to become reclusive and withdrawn as they live in their own detached world. One of the best ways to not let this happen is to become active in a local fellowship of believers, active being the operative word. The purpose as stated in the Scriptures for membership within a local fellowship has to do with building each other up, that's what edification means. You can't build anything or anyone up if you are not actively involved in the work required to see it done. That's right. Work. It takes serving to see ourselves fulfill the calling on our lives. Serving God first, and demonstrating our devotion to Him by serving others. Easy to say. Very difficult to do, but with God's help we can become all He would have us to be. Pray for the people of Japan and so many others suffering all over our globe. Pray for one another even as I send out today's edition with a prayer that God will bless you and yours. Amen.              .....More later.