What is wrong with love #229

‘…when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God………
…Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools………..’
Romans 1:21-22

As I finally took that first but important step of moving back into gear, to go back into the usual but important routine of aligning my thoughts with the Lord our God, the Book of Romans(Chapter 1) was where the Lord brought me to.

Rome was where I first landed in my past two weeks of traversing across the belly of Italy and I have probably seen more churches, monastries and its accessorial frescos and statues of Saints than in these past fortnight than I ever did my entire life.

‘…the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the Lord had commanded’
Exodus 36:1

If pilgrimage is defined by the one having traversed the land where one’s faith had a long and great history, and taken in the sights of the monuments of our faith, than surely, anyone who has gone on a trip to Europe should return with a halo over their head

Strangely not, my sense of spirituality did not feel greatly uplifted, in fact, it tended to reflect the emptiness of the beautiful but generally empty churches of increasingly secular Europe.

‘..Is there a God beside Me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any’
They that make a graven image are all of them vanity……..’
Isaiah 44:8-10

The increasingly avowed secularists of the world, in their desire to promote the ‘religion’ of secularism, have often pounced on the history of religious initiated warfares as proof of the bane that religion can have on men’s emotions and ‘natural’ propensity to be peaceful, if religion does not exist.

But truly, with or without religion, men by nature is sinful and history is replete with examples of incessant warfare and evil amongst the pagans and in the modern epoch of human history, just alone amongst three great ‘atheists’ ie Stalin(in the gulag), Mao Tze Tung(cultural revoulution) and Hitler(the superiour Aryan race), millions have died when men decided to play God.

‘He heweth him down cedars…..He burneth part thereof in the fire….He warmeth himself…
…And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image, he falleth down unto it, and worhsippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver m; for thou art my god’
Isaiah 44:14-17
Man is fickle. In the early days of Christianity, in pagan Europe, to be a Christina will increase one’s chances of being burned at the stakes, or fed as fodder to the lions, for King Charlemange was not too enamored of Christ.
Things came one full circle, when the Roman Emperor Constantinople became a Christian and not being a Christian then would mean being burned as a heretic.

‘I have pursued mine enemies, and have overtaken them, neither did I turn again till they were consumed’
Psalm 18:37