new life fellowship

serving jesus christ the king

C-ash from Iceland

Writing in the Letters section of the Irish times, Míceál Bolger humorously notes:

“Britain and the Netherlands demanded cash from Iceland, but overlooked one small detail—the Icelandic language does not contain the letter C”

Humour aside, who would have thought that our highly technological society could so easily grind to a halt? We are so used to making our plans—today we will go here, do this, then go here—and so used to them working out mostly without hitch, that we forget that we are not the omnipotent creatures we like to think we are.

In Job 37:5-7 we read:

“God's voice thunders in marvellous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labour.”

While it is ash rather than snow, God’s voice is certainly thundering as the ash circulates above us, disrupting travel. Many who made ‘definite’ plans have been frustrated and forced to take refuge in airports. God has once again stopped a large cross-section of humanity from its labour.

It’s not the first time this year that God’s voice has thundered, stopping man in his work, forcing us to rearrange our plans. Prolonged freezes, unexpected snowfalls, heavy rain, earthquakes, now the eruption of a little-known volcano, and modern man is seen to be not so self-sufficient.

Over the last number of weeks I’ve been preaching on the Old Testament book of Exodus. There we read of God bringing one of the world’s superpowers—Egypt—to a shuddering halt. He had warned and warned, but they refused to listen, and so he sent an escalating series of disasters to get their attention. The events of the last few months strike me as something similar.

As the 20
th century closed and as the 21st century has progressed, we have placed unbounded faith in ourselves—despite all evidence to the contrary. A myriad of wars, a society creaking towards chaos, a global financial meltdown—man is not such a great arbiter of his destiny.

God has been shaking the foundations of our beliefs, whether it be in religious institutions, or in our own abilities. He has been trying to get our attention. What should we do? We need to give him our attention!

We need to humble ourselves, turn from our proud self-sufficiency to him, before he needs to turn up the volume another notch to get our attention.