Meant to have an impact

It’s quite something witnessing the impact of the kingdom of God on someone who clearly hasn’t been hit by it yet. 

A case in point was an interview with a Doctor by a seasoned TV presenter who despairs at what’s happening in our world of late, evidenced by the Doctor herself and what had happened to her.

As a highly qualified Doctor she began to see holes in the prevailing narrative of the pandemic – not intentionally because she’d gone along with it too. But in voicing her concerns to her colleagues she was met with outright hostility, and none of them expressed any interest or curiosity in what concerned her, which to her was totally contrary to true science and scientific enquiry, and deeply disrespectful toward the foundational ethics of medicine. 

Massively censored and her career in tatters, she found herself, just like the Naphtalians in Galilee in Jesus’ day, “walking in darkness,” sunk deep in what she called a “spiritually heavy, dark feeling” she could not shake, just like the “gloom” predicted for Naphtali in Isaiah 9:1. And being an ardent atheist she also found there was nothing that could ease her distress or combat her fear of dying. It was her “darkest period.”  

But “During that time,” she said, “I was being introduced to Christians” and when asked if she was a Christian and she said, “No,” something very different happened. No hostility or disinterest, but a little peek into the kingdom of God, because the answer she kept getting was, “I’m praying for you.” Like Mark 2:12, she’d “never seen anything like this!”

It was “really strange,” she said, because “while the world was becoming more ridiculous than ever and I was under more attack than ever, I started to feel completely at peace in a way I hadn’t since being a child.” 

But Jesus did say in John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” And she’s not. She was, but not any longer, because that’s what Jesus came to create for people when he said, “The time has come; the kingdom of God is near,” and its impact, therefore, would be felt – because that’s what’s meant to happen. So what distracts us from that? It’s “Our problem with gods”….(next blog)