Minute Meditations

Switzerland is a remarkable land. It is famous for its beautiful scenery, high snow capped mountains, cascading water falls and lovely glacier lakes.

But it is remarkable in another way. It has a wonderful transportation system with trains, busses, cog railways, funiculars which travel thousands of feet right up the side of the mountain, ships, huge gondolas, and chair lifts. These crisscross their tiny country and transport millions of travelers to every corner of their beautiful land.

The time schedules are all printed in advance and those who study them can travel for hours changing from a funicular to a bus to a train, to a cog railway, back to a bus. and train and make connections each time with only two or three minutes in between.

What spiritual lesson can we learn from this? Those who read and understand these man made books of time tables are able to travel and get where they want to go.

No one claims that these time tables are divinely inspired but those who make them and use them can trust them because they are followed.

We have some man made documents that can help us also. They are not inspired by God but are the work of conscientious and dedicated servants of the Lord who have written our Statement of Faith, our Ecclesial Guide, our constitutions and ecclesial rules for the orderly outworking of our lives. We need to be familiar with these and we need to give them their proper respect.

In so many countries of the world the populace seem to regard rules as something to be broken and they only obey or observe those that please them. As a result there is mass confusion and chaos while in Switzerland there is order.

We need to respect and obey the rules of our ecclesia and our brotherhood. It is not right to justify our defiance of a rule simply because it was made by man and not by God.

Peter rightly said, ”We ought to obey God rather than man” but none of our ecclesial rules violate His commands. We need to show the proper respect for the rules of our community even as we acknowledge that they were not divinely inspired. Paul instructed us that ”the rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” He was speaking of the worldly rulers. If the saints are expected to ”he subject, not only for wrath but for conscience sake to those who have the rule over us,” how much more so should we be obedient to the ecclesial rules that have been made for our benefit.

Jesus told us that ”the children of this world are wiser in their generation that the children of light.”

Let us learn a lesson from the Swiss people. They know and respect the rules of their country. They study their books of schedules and they have faith that things will go according to plan. Unfortunately none of their well laid plans are able to make them wise unto salvation, and this is sad.

God sent Jeremiah to the house of the Rechahites to learn a spiritual lesson from a man made rule. Their father Jonadab had made a rule that none of his offspring should ever drink wine and his children were faithful to that rule. God’s lesson was that they obeyed their human father yet the Children of Israel did not obey their Heavenly Father.

Let us have respect for the rules of our ecclesial family. God blessed the Rechabites because they were faithful to their father. None of us are bigger than our rules.

The Swiss people are an example of how a nation can function smoothly by knowing and observing their well laid schedules. Let us learn from their example and lift this up to a spiritual level and faithfully study and follow not only God’s Book of Life which is able to make us wise unto salvation but let us also ”render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour... Let us walk honestly, as in the day... put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.”