Headlines can
be confusing, can’t they? For instance, one headline read,”Joint Committee
Investigates Marijuana Use.” Another stated, “Cold Wave Linked To
Temperatures.” You don’t say?! And how about this one – “Grandmother of Eight
Makes Hole In One”?! How hungry are you for headlines? So much of it is a
report on the lowest and meanest and bloodiest men and women can do to each
other.
A little caution might be in order before we swallow everything we hear
from those who make and those who choose the headlines we get to hear. Jerry
Seinfeld wondered out loud something every Christian should think about. He
said, “It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day
always just exactly fits the newspaper” (or the website or blog or tweet or
talk-show, etc.)!
Bill Gates is one of America’s most successful and richest
businessmen. He warned, “Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad
news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.” The news people don’t tell
us about the multiplied thousands and thousands of airplanes that don’t crash –
only the ones that do! And so it is almost certain that the murder and mayhem,
robbing and raping, burning and bombing, fussing and fighting, arguing and
animosity, and hatred and hostilities will go on dominating headlines on earth.
As Tracy Morgan said, "Bad news travels at the speed of light; good news
travels like molasses.”
Here is where
the gospel continues to stand out as it relates to the news! It allows us, as
the late great news commentator Paul Harvey used to say, to “wash your ears out
with this”!! Heaven has some good news God wants His church to continue to
headline. Consider the words of the apostle Paul as he began his letter to
Christians living in the first century Asian city of Colosse 2,000 years ago.
As he thanked God for the faith and love that existed in the hearts of the
Christians in the church at Colosse, he said in Colossians 1:5-6 – “because of
the hope that is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the
word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you, as it it has also in
all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the
day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth.” The word of God amazes, and
I hope it amazes you, too!
The book of Colossians (like most books of the New Testament) never ignores the evil and sin and darkness in
the world, but it simply will not allow all that bad news to headline! Heaven’s
headline always center on the gospel. It’s like God is telling us, in a world
where headlines are bleak and blue and bloody, “Wash your ears – and your
hearts and souls – out with this!” As often noted the word gospel means “good
news.” In this day of crime and global terrorism and moral decline, we really need
some good news. How about it – could you use some good news? Are things rough
for you here on earth? Has your physical health taken a hiatus? Does your money
often run out before the month? Have friends forsaken you? Has sin taken more
than it promised to give you and left a scar in your soul? Is there now more
fizzle that sizzle in your marriage?
Why don’t you tune in and hear heaven’s
headlines? God loves you! Christ died for you and rose from the dead! There is
hope laid up for you in heaven! That headline never changes! Will you hear that
headline? Are you listening?
--Dan Gulley
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