October 2007 Archives

Sounds like great news, right? Well, take a look at how it was reported. From U.S. News & World Reports:

USA Today reports the “number of US combat deaths in Iraq is headed for the lowest level in more than a year and a half and the fifth consecutive monthly decline.” The “new strategy, backed up by 30,000 more US servicemembers, has led to a decline in violence and weakened al-Qaeda, commanders say.”

The AP, however, reports “the military cautioned it’s too early to declare a long-term trend,” though it “would be the second consecutive drop in monthly figures, after 65 Americans died in September and 84 in August.” The Christian Science Monitor reports the data are “an encouraging sign, say analysts and defense officials, that the US strategy is working, at least for now.”

Two of the three network newscasts noted the story last night although they appeared to assign different significance to the new data. ABC World News saw the casualty numbers as “another indication of how things are changing.” NBC Nightly News, meanwhile, reported that in Iraq, “three more Americans were killed there today when an IED went off southeast of Baghdad. That brings the toll for October to 37 Americans dead, which we should point out is the lowest monthly total in a year and a half. Since the war started almost 4 1/2 years ago, more than 3,800 Americans have died in the war in Iraq.”

…

The Washington Post says “progress on political goals and reconstruction has been stalled by weaknesses in US strategy and the ineffectiveness of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad,” according to a GAO report.

The New York Times reports “more than $100 billion has been devoted to rebuilding Iraq, mainly thanks to American taxpayers and Iraqi oil revenues, but nearly five years into the conflict, output in critical areas like water and electricity remain below United States goals, federal oversight officials reported to Congress on Tuesday.”

And the CBS Evening News ran a piece about “a new threat tonight, not from bombs or bullets, but from a dam that could burst at any time. It was built during the Saddam era north of Mosul. And if it goes…the results could be catastrophic.”

Hi Kids. This isn’t your Grandpa’s Christianity because this isn’t Grandpa’s time. It’s our time and for such a time as this you were placed on the earth by the design of God to do your part to bring His love and His Son to a dying world. Is this what you are doing or are doing commonplace things and thinking “that stuff is the pastor’s job” or “what can I do?”

The first thing to remember is that you can’t do anything but that God through you can do anything and he is itching to work through everyone of us.

One time I was at the grocery store and was in line behind a man who didn’t have enough to pay for what he had checked out. He had miscounted what he had and I could see that he was picking out stuff to take off the total. I had a thought to offer to pay the rest of his bill which was only about ten bucks and am I glad I did.

I offered the cash to him but he didn’t want to take it. The cashier pipes up and says to him “You should take it, It’s a blessing from God” She then tells us all (the rest of the line of shoppers) about a man coming up to her the previous Christmas and giving her a hundred bucks and saying “it’s from God” At this point she turns back to the man and says “Go ahead, I’ll explain it all later” as it became evident she knew him personally. She turns to me and says “You’re a Christian Aren’t you? I knew it as soon as you offered”

While all this is going on, I couldn’t help but marvel on it all. All I did was a simple act of kindness and I got to watch the Lord take over the whole situation.

The whole point here is that it is within all our hands to be the ambassadors of Christ we are called to be. We don’t have to be Supersaint or perfect to be used by the Lord to touch the lives of others in a lasting and eternal way.

You can do it, kids. It isn’t rocket science.