“Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries…You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure. The wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts…”
It is a sobering thought to think that this extract from the letter of James, as with others in the New Testament, which excoriate the ungodly practices of their audiences, was written to communities of Christians, So we get a picture of some of the problems existent in those early communities. It is tempting to fantasize about these early communities as having it all together, being ideal communities of fresh Christians with people who had actually seen Jesus and the apostles…not like Christians of our day and age.
But what we see in reality is the consistency of human nature down through the centuries with the lure of putting more faith in things of this world than in God, the divisive tendency to assert self-importance or that of one’s group over another, and the dozens of other human impulses which make our following of Christ less than perfect. For that very reason, the words of scripture have as much life for us today as they did back when they were written centuries ago.
****** DON’T MISS OUR BLESSING OF ANIMALS SERVICE AT ST PHILIP’S ON SATURDAY OCTOBER 6TH AT 10AM (RAINDATE :OCTOBER 13TH). BRING YOUR PET , OR A PHOTO OF YOUR PET, ALONG TO THE PARKING LOT IN FRONT OF THE CHURCH, AND FR BOB WILL CALL DOWN GOD’S BLESSING ON THEM !! ***************