A Kinder Gentler Nation

“And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: (Genesis 12:2)

God spoke these words to Abraham thousands of years ago and this promise was fulfilled through the birth of Isaac and his descendents, who eventually formed the Israel nations. We loved God and followed His laws and our lands were blessed and we prospered. We were a kind and gentle nation. We had respect for our fellow man and helped each other as best we could.

We helped each other in the good times as well as the bad. Our lands and our resources were ours and for the most part we tried to keep everything running smoothly because we cared and respected what we had been given. Companies were formed and provided jobs for people to live and contributed to the community and helped it to prosper. We went to church every week and thanked God for His blessings.

What has happened to this “kinder gentler nation”? We have lost control of our resources and no one seems to care what is happening to our environment. Our lands, rivers and oceans are being exploited for profit rather than us maintaining them so that they can provide us with a living and a healthy environment to live in. Our companies are either moving their head offices to other lands or they are outsourcing many of the jobs overseas. They no longer care about providing jobs for the community and to help it prosper, they only care about their profit margin.

We also seem to have lost respect for each other. We have become very much a “what is best for me” culture and only help others when it is convenient for us. Many young people have little or no supervision and are roaming the streets at all hours. A lot of them are very angry. We have let future generations down by not walking with the Lord and teaching them to follow Christ. We have not given them any hope.

It is time we acknowledge why we were great nations and so blessed. We were not great because of anything we personally did or because we were lucky to live in these lands. We were great because God loved us and wanted to have a relationship with us. He wanted us to be a Servant people to the world. We were to love the Lord our God and obey Him. “That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth. For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him; Then will the Lord drive out all these nations from before you and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves” (Deut. 11:21-23).

God gave us these lands and we were to take care of them and walk with Him. We were Christian nations and we honoured the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour. Without Christ we are nothing and we can expect nothing good to come out of all that is currently happening in our lands until we return to Him. “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1Cor. 8:6).

These are dark days for our Israel nations and for the world. I am adding this wonderful poem by Minnie Louise Haskins to the end of this article as I believe it is a poem of such encouragement to us all at this time. King George VI used it in his 1939 Christmas message and it was chosen by the Royal Family to be read at the Queen Mother’s funeral.

I said to the man
who stood at the gate of the year
“Give me a light that I may tread safely
into the unknown.”
And he replied:” Go out into the darkness
and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be better than light
and safer than a known way!”
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
trod gladly into the night.
M. Louise Haskins (1875-1957)

Put your hand into the hand of God. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life:”  (John 14:6).