It was brought to my attention earlier today that my missives here in this space every week have taken on a more serious tone. That is a fairly accurate description as it seems the Lord has been guiding me to be more serious of late and that tells me there must be a reason for the more dire tone. Perhaps it is due to the fact that my own life has been fairly serious of late, or maybe it is because I feel like the days we live in require a seriousness that most seem to not recognize.
We live in hard times. That is impossible to not see. The violence in our world is everywhere. There is now no longer “big city” crimes and violence because it happens in small town America too. The cost of living is currently spiraling upward at a rate where it is becoming more and more of a challenge to keep the bills paid and food on the table. Unemployment is rampant. The chasm between the rich and the poor is ever widening, and the world that our children and grandchildren are growing up in is becoming one that I would not ever wish for them to have to face. Yep, that is some pretty serious stuff.
But here is the deal. We can’t sit back and act surprised that all of those things exist in our world today. If you pick up a single book, you know the one with the red letters, it is not hard to find passages that tell us what the last days will be like. You say, hold up there Kenny, are you saying we are living in the last days? Well, if we aren’t living in the last days now, I for sure don’t want to see what the last days are going to be like. And you can scoff at my thoughts that we are in those days if you like. But just so you know, I Peter 3:3 says, “Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.”
