Happy Ground Hog Day

Today is Ground Hog Day, are you psyched?  Ole Phil popped out of his lair about an hour from State College this morning and  saw his shadow then predicted six more weeks of winter. Bad woodchuck, bad !!  Fortunately for us, this is pure myth and merely an excuse for people to party and gain their fifteen minutes of fame.

Paul wrote two books to his young protege Timothy and in the first letter he admonished him, “. . .charge some that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith, so do.”  (1:3-4).  I’m not saying folks can’t have good clean fun with rodent lore and gather a few laughs in the process, but what I believe Paul was  warning us about was getting sidetracked by things which are without scriptural basis or merit. What we pay attention to must promote the building up of the faith in us not casting doubts (or even shadows, ha) upon it and tearing it down to us or others around us.

One such fable is evolution which has infiltrated much of our world. You cannot escape this fanciful and baseless idea when you go to a museum, watch or read about anything related to the planet’s origins. Yet as we’re seeing in our Sunday School lately from Dr. Sharp there are  about as many views out there about dinosaurs and fossils as there are “scientists” (and I use that term loosely). This Satanically concocted myth is one of the devil’s devices to undermine the crediblity of God’s Word.  Yet Genesis 1 tells us very simply and powerfully that God created the universe “ex nihilo” (out of nothing) simply by speaking it into existence ! And Moses recorded these days of creation in the Hebrew as 24 hour periods !!  If God is God, why is this so hard to believe?  Yet if evolution be true there is a lot they have to make sense about (and I mean a lot !!).

Now for the seasoned Bible believer who has been able to sit in a church under good preaching and teaching, evolution is not something we may fall for but we must still be committed, as Paul wrote to Timothy, to paying more creedence to those things which edify. How will you spend your mental energies today? What will you focus on? Will you take some time to meditate on God and His Word or spend more time fixating on some worry or fear?  Most of what we worry about never happens, so maybe our worries can very much be associated with fables as opposed to facts !   You may concentrate on those things that need to get done but what will you do when something disrupts that agenda? Will you look at it falsely and complain or factually that God allows it all for your ultimate good and praise Him?!   Keep chugging along doing what you know His Word teaches you to do and leave the rest to Him and have a Happy Ground Hog Day !!!