‘A man has been injured in a suspected shooting in a Nottinghamshire town. The victim was found by police with a non-life threatening wound to his leg in Hamilton Road, Sutton-in-Ashfield on Thursday evening’.
These lines taken from the BBC News website are a reminder of how
events of a serious nature are getting closer and closer to each one of us.
Whether this particular matter turns out to be associated with a crime or not
we will have to wait and see. Some of us living in the locality remain a little
uneasy.
Those old enough to remember back into the 20th Century can
recall events that became national scandals which, in today’s world, would
barely feature. Gun crime is one such event. The sadness is that we have not
noticed. When change is gradual, and over a lengthy period, the shock is lost.
What can be worse is when decline is seen as ‘progress’, and change for the
worse is somehow ‘normal’.
The marital exploits of 20th Century film stars, like
Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, were regarded as
scandalous by many of the day. Now such exploits are commonplace. How many
people do we know who have been married, and remained faithful to their
partners, for more than 30 years? Multiple divorces are seen as ‘progress’. This is ‘tolerance’. The damage to
the adults and children caught up in this moral mess is greater than anyone
realizes, or stops to calculate.
What we often lose sight of is that the God of the universe does not
change, and His standards are unalterable. What society once abhorred but is now
prepared to accept and even applaud remains sin in the sight of God. Social views
can change. God does not! The laws of the land can change. The law of God does
not! The challenge is that measured against the ten commandments we all fall
short.
The fact that God does not change is a challenge to all of us but it
also offers us hope. Whilst God’s standards remain the same, the way of
salvation remains the same. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is still
the only way to God. When all around may be changing, and changing rapidly, how
reassuring to know that faith in Christ can still being salvation to a lost
sinner!
[picture taken from: http://www.deepdotweb.com/]
