Call to Action: Learning from the War of the Jews

I have been reading through the amazing War of the Jews by Josephus, and ran across this exhortation by the high priest Ananus, and couldn't help but think the same type of speech could be equally applied to the majority of American's today who sit idly by and watch out freedoms dwindle as the government usurps more and more authority than they are Constitutionally allowed.

Of course I totally realize they were in a very different situation, being right in the middle of an all out bloody war. Their family and friends were dying around them, and their sacred things were being desecrated, and their foes were seemingly unstoppable. I just see a lot of what is being said about the non action of people during hard times, leads to loss of freedom and harder times. I see how that has been the case with our country over the past 150 years or so.

The lawful, Constitutional restraints of government have all but been forgotten by the government educated masses, and people today just go with the flow, and take little to no concern, and therefore the government encroaches on more and more freedoms. People need to pay attention, vote, and become real citizens of this country, and not just sit by and get steamrolled over. Hopefully, you too can read this, and keeping America in mind, be stirred, if even a little, to be more involved.

Hoping it Sinks In: Dealing with Grief and God's Sovereignty

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die...I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him...There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous...then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out...But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2, 14; 8:14, 17; 9:1)