Isaiah 54:17. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of (from) me, saith the Lord.
Oh Friends, I won’t venture to say what kind of weather we can expect today, but I will say that yesterday’s contradictory forecasts turned out that the day time was hot and sunny, while the evening hours had some rain. So to some extent there was truth in both forecasts. (smile) I wouldn’t want a weather forecaster’s job now for all the tea in China! Aye mih old time West Indian breddren, you remember that one?
Anyway, today is Independence Day in the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, better known as T&T, the home of sweet pan, kaiso, roti, doubles and limbo. Wouldn’t mind checking out some of all of them right now. (smile)
To tell the truth though, I was in the middle of my teenaged years, in High School, when the country received Independence from Great Britain in 1962, and I cannot remember what I did over that holiday period of great excitement and enthusiasm, but I do know that the festivities were plentiful.
There was also much talk about freedom from Colonial powers in the air, as the mother countries were beginning to relinquish their strangle holds on their former colonies. But everyone in T&T saw it as a day of freedom, freedom to assert ourselves as we saw fit.
However Friends, unfortunately, 51 years later, T&T, and for that matter most of the other countries who gained independence around that time, have all made a mess of the freedom they were granted back then. It seems that no one thought about the immense responsibility that freedom to govern oneself, or any kind of freedom confers on a freed man or nation. We were all apparently too concerned with severing the umbilical cord that bound us to our colonial masters.
And sadly now, T&T, despite its oil wealth is tottering economically, its crime and violence are world renowned, so too is its corruption, with inept governments ruling the roost for some time now, with too many people who don’t seem to care about what’s happening, once things are okay with them, and the Carnival mentality is just as strong as it’s always been.
But by the same token Friends, most of the world’s countries are being plagued by the same negative things, so T&T is not alone in its shortcomings. And say what yuh want, it is still one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with a mixture of beautiful women you won’t find anywhere else on God’s great earth, as well as festivals celebrating races, creeds and cultures from all over.
So All Hail T&T! You might be a bit down for the count right now, but you’re definitely not out. And I know for sure that we’re a very resilient people, a nation that can bounce back from adversity like no one else. So have a Happy 51st Independence Celebrations T&T!
And please do like the Wack 90.1 morning show theme song says; sincerely and reverently ask the Lord to stay His hand on T&T, if He has any further disasters to bring upon the country. And my people we all know that’s a very probable outcome if we’d only turn back to Almighty God and be obedient to His will, because He’s promised that in His Word, as evidenced by our Bit:
‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of (from) me, saith the Lord.’
Yes my fellow believers, that’s one of the many promises that our ever-faithful God has given us. But the problem is that we need to show Him some faithfulness too. Many of His promises are conditional on our behaviour towards Him and His edicts. And that’s what we can’t seem to get through our thick skulls, so mesmerized and hypnotized as we are by Lucifer and the material and flimsy things of this evil, ungodly world.
And we have a good example of that in Isaiah 17, where Damascus and all those aligned with it, are prophesied to be destroyed because of their turning away from their God. Listen to the Good Book tell it. ‘At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made either the groves (incense altars) or the (wooden) images (of Asherah, a Canaanite god).
In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel: and there shall be desolation. Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength (stronghold), therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips (set out foreign seedlings): In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.’ (Is.17:7-11)
Oh Friends, that’s a universal promise! And according to the scholars the prophecy was fulfilled when Damascus was destroyed by the Assyrians in 732 B.C and there was a big famine followed by the devastation of the land and deportation of the northern tribes by Sargon of Assyria in 722 B.C.
So isn’t it time we pay serious attention to the Lord’s promises, whether they’re for good or for evil? And coincidentally, Damascus and its allies are right now in a serious fight for survival. Shouldn’t that tell us something?
But then again our God is so marvellous and wonderful to those who worship Him in sincerity and truth. Here’s what he says at the end of the chapter. ‘Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not (no more). This is the portion of them that spoil (plunder) us, and the lot of them that rob us.’ (Is.17:12-14)
So Friends, the moral of the story is that it does pay to serve and worship the omnipotent and ONLY true God of the universe, He of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Please, let’s try our best to get our fellow man to follow that eternal wisdom nuh. It would do so much for our calamitous world right now. Much LOVE!
…if you don’t hear…you most certainly will feel…
SCRIP-BITS 