WHOSE GOD IS THEIR BELLY?

MICHAELMAS, The Feast of St. Michael and all Angels has past. I always come to it full of excitement - to me it seems the likeliest time of year for my Master and Lord to return in the clouds to call for me. Some might say my head is stuck in the clouds, and that I might do better to keep my feet on the ground! Well it is the generation predicted to scoff and to turn their eyes away from spiritual truth to earthly deceptions. But I LOOK for His Coming with all my heart and soul. Michaelmas has gone by and still He has not come. I am disappointed but have no way given up to still LOOK for Him.

Some years ago, here in Eldoret, I used to do the general shopping in an old style General Store - a left over from the Colonial Days. At the cheese counter where the Bacon Machine that sliced the Ham stood, I would always find a Catholic Priest. He was elderly - into his late seventies, portly, with a fresh pink face, boyish and smiling. He had been in Kenya since he was in his early twenties. He was always perched on a high stool in front of the counter - a little glass of 'something' in his hand. He had a halo of silvery hair around an otherwise bald head making him look suitably 'holy'. I knew him well. He always spied me as I entered, and would raise his glass and shout in his rich Irish accent 'Top of the mornin to yu, John, m'boy! ----- Are ye still keepin a watch for The LORD t'come? Are ye READY?'' HE was for ever looking, and never tired to draw attention to it, and thus doing his best to wake folk up in order that they also might LOOK with him. He has passed on now. The General Store has passed on too, to make away for a modern and ugly looking Bank. By the way for all that he liked his 'glass' I have never known him tipsy. His name was Father Murray.

Times change don't they.............

This week, on the 25th, Esther and I, together with Daryl and Carol were invited to join in with our Missionary Fellowship ( a group of some 60 missionaries USA, Canada, UK, Denmark, Holland, Germany, and Kenya that meets regularly for prayer) to celebrate Thanksgiving with our American brethren. It was a good time of REAL Thanksgiving to God for ALL His benefits, and ended in sharing a truly cosmopolitan meal together - turkey being central to everything. It was a great time. I guess it is a time of year in America and Canada that is almost more than Christmas - yet perhaps the real purpose in celebrating - for the majority - has long been lost. Both are now almost totally secular in application - holidays to play and more especially to EAT in. Not many giving Thanks to God, and because of it, to also appreciating each other!

Read somewhere recently that traditionally the first Thanksgiving was supposed to have been held around 1620 by the early Colonialists in the US. They had previously endured a very hard winter, but with the summer had come a bountiful harvest time, made possible ONLY because of the goodwill and assistance given them from the Native Indians they had found there. In fact those first visitors to their land might have DIED if they had not been helped by the Indians. They gave Thanks together - not only for the crops that ensured the continuity of life, but for the brotherhood and friendship that produced it. It was not a holiday, but just a coming together to Thank God, and each other. To Rejoice with each other over a simple feast - none were left out. THREE years later there was another one, but this time the Indians were not invited - the Colonialists were by this time looking for more land - Indian land - and instead of pulling together and appreciating each other - greed and selfish desire had turned friendship to enmity, and a common cause was lost to personal ambition and vain imaginations. Later Abraham Lincoln announced that Thanksgiving would be an official Holiday........ and many people have forgotten what it may originally have signified! Some now refer to it lightly, merely as TURKEY DAY!

TIME changes things. Things get forgotten.

We live in an age and generation when all the old Memorials that were set up to REMIND us of what we NEEDED to remember are being systematically removed, undermined, and even destroyed by a hedonistic and godless world. The GREATEST Landmark being the BIBLE itself. Often flashing across my mind's eye is the sight of an ever increasing mass of pigs running heedlessly down a steep precipice to ......! 'Seas,' of humanity, mindless of God in their hearts and spirits, rushing headlong AWAY from the only good, the only wisdom. Yes we need to consider the words of Provers 22v28 in the Bible -

''Remove not the ancient landmark
which they fathers have set.''

Forget not the standards set up in PAST generations, the lessons of history set upon God's revealed Will and purpose since the world began. Be not so quick to discard the wisdom of those before you, and bring to nothing all that has been learnt and understood.

As I sat with Esther munching MY turkey on Thursday afternoon, American Thanksgiving Day, I wondered if, in England any took their 'harvest' to the Church in Thanksgiving. I wondered if they had forgotten WHO had given them whatever they had. However little it might be. Every breath comes from God. I always associate Michaelmas in England with the Michaelmas Daisy, and Church interiors decorated with their profusion, amidst the fruit and labour of the land, and even symbols of more mechanical benefits. I always FELT the Presence of a Beneficent God during those Harvest Festival Services; Services that seemed to co-incide with the remembrance of the Mighty Archangel Michael, the Victor over Satan and all his horde. Are their still little hamlets of reverent joy and thanksgiving left I wonder? Or has the noise of traffic, t.v. and secular lethargy overwhelmed all awareness, together with the knowledge of God Almighty? We should not forget. We should not be overwhelmed and shouted down. We should stand up and AWAKEN ourselves to proclaim the Day of the Lord.

I have no more today to say to you. Few of you have had anything to say back to me relative to anything I have shared this year gone by. Perhaps it is so many dried up leaves in the wind.

God Bless you none the less, and enliven each one of you to WITNESS to what you know of Jesus, and through Him, of God The Father Almighty.

John and Esther