Future proof living

Do you have any plans for today, the next few days, weeks, months or later on in the year? What are you looking forward to most? Do you have a special birthday coming up? Do you have an engagement party or a wedding to look forward to, maybe? Do you have a holiday planned? 

Where does God fit in to any plans that you have made for a future date? I once heard this excellent advice a few years ago: “Plan as if Christ’s return were years away but live as if it were today.” Can I ask how do you respond to that advice? 

It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” He also said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” These are wise words and reinforce the quote I have already shared with you. 

Not my King!

All photos courtesy of Unsplash 

The coronation of King Charles III was watched by a peak TV audience of around 20 million viewers in the UK, while many thousands lined the route of the royal procession in London, supervised by 11,500 police officers. Inside Westminster Abbey just over two thousand guests, including Presidents, Prime Ministers and Kings and Queens from other nations, respectfully watched the ceremony. The steadily falling rain could not dampen the spirits of the crowds, many of whom had camped out for hours to secure a prime location from which to get the best possible view of the pomp and pageantry.

While so many were eager to be present and show their appreciation and support for the King, there was a comparatively small but vocal number of protesters who left no one in any doubt that they had absolutely no respect for the man who was going to Westminster Abbey to be crowned King. They held their placards aloft with a simple, unambiguous message inscribed on them: “Not my King”. They wanted to make it abundantly clear that they had no allegiance to this Monarch and no love for the Royal Family. Their boos and chants were drowned out by the overwhelmingly larger numbers who joined in the singing of the National Anthem and cheered enthusiastically as the procession moved past.A similar scene was enacted almost two thousand years ago, but on a much grander scale. Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, was interrogating a prisoner in Whom he could find no fault and therefore he was unwilling to punish Him and desired to release Him. He said to the multitudes of Jews who had thronged the narrow streets of Jerusalem outside the Praetorium, the Governor’s palace where he conducted many trials, “Behold your King!” John 19.14. The immediate response, without delay or dissent, from the amassed crowds was, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him … We have no king but Caesar” John 19.15. The loud, angry voices conveyed a unanimous message of total rejection of this King, the Son of God. Shortly afterwards that innocent, sinless Man Whom the world refused was led, cross-laden and thorn-crowned, to Golgotha, to be put to death by the most cruel and violent method of execution: crucifixion. This world is stained with the blood of Christ and is guilty of His murder.

The Liver Building, Liverpool Waterfront

National Holocaust Day 2023

Photos from own collection

Auschwitz was the largest Nazi concentration camp.  More than 1,100,000 men, women, and children lost their lives here.  Multiple train tracks led in to this extermination camp, no Jew ever came out!

All over the nation, places of public entertainment are closed, and last night a state ceremony was held in the Warsaw Ghetto Square in Jerusalem to honor the Jewish people who perished at the hands of Nazi Germany.

The flag was lowered to half-staff, and prayers were recited.  Holocaust survivors lit the six torches that symbolize the Six Million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust under Hitler's Final Solution.

Despite the process of dehumanization and annihilation that the Nazis unleashed on the Jewish People, necessitating a struggle for survival in the worst of circumstances, many Jews continued to exercise creativity, pursue education and culture, recite prayer, and observe the holidays.

"Many of those who struggled to maintain and preserve the human spirit did not survive the horrors of the Holocaust, but their deeds and actions are a reminder to future generations of the stamina and nobility of the human spirit," the Yad VaShem website states.

The Nazis packed Jewish people like cattle into railroad cars as they shipped them to their final destination at labor and extermination camps.  Those camps were part of Hitler's "Final Solution" to kill all of the 
Jewish People.

The Nazis intended that no Jew would survive the Holocaust.

Multiple tracks led from all over Europe to concentration camps like Auschwitz.  Jewish people were crammed into cattle cars and shipped to these death camps.  Very few survived.

Many were gassed immediately upon arrival and their bodies burned in ovens.  

Those who were healthy enough to work when they arrived were literally worked to death.

Two-thirds of European Jewry, that was one-third of all world Jewry, died in the Holocaust.

This horrible, unfathomable number—six million murdered—does not count the many Jewish children who will never be born because of this genocide.

Whole families were destroyed.  Some Jewish people who came out of the Holocaust were the sole survivor of their family.  They were left completely alone.  Many communities were utterly erased.

Those who came to Israel from Europe were a remnant.

Some of those who were gassed and put in the ovens were the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles of our Bibles for Israel Ministry staff.

May We Never Forget.

Paying tribute to the six million who perished in the Holocaust.  
Never Again!

Used by permission  

"The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD.   Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing."  (Isaiah 51:3)