VICAR

Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust that I find You and Your families well this Sunday.

Life is all about using Our free will, given to Us by God. What is the correct choice? What is the wrong course of action? There are times when trial and error is a justified policy. There are other times when We are expected to follow orders or literally gamble.

I have found that by filtering our decisions through these three steps, we will move toward better and more disciple-based decisions in our lives:

LOOK TO THE WORD OF GOD FIRST.
IF IT’S NOT IN SCRIPTURE, PRAY AND USE WISDOM.
SEEK WISE COUNSEL.

There are many across the country who are making wrong decisions. The new government has been caught out and its honeymoon lasted a week at most. Those who have taken to the streets to protest against Muslim immigration, have they really thought through the consequences of their violent actions? You see wrong decisions taken by celebrities, by businesspeople and by those around You in Your daily life, every day.

Look on social media at the trolls. Look in the morgues at the drug addicts. Look in the prisons for those who have committed all kinds of crimes from rape to fraud to perjury. Paul rejected human wisdom as a means of teaching the simple message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Human wisdom involves the observation and analysis of life from a limited human perspective. Being limited and fallible, human wisdom rejects anything which can’t be comprehended or worked out by human intelligence. While reason, evidence, and knowledge are important, they don’t infallibly lead a person to accept truth (James 2:19; Romans 1:18–23).

God Bless You all.

Choose wisely.

Have a lovely Sunday and another great week to come. (I am on holiday this week and shall mull over a few decisions I must take soon in my life while smoking a cigar kindly given to me by the Squires when I hit 70 earlier this year).

Grant to us, Lord, the spirit
to think on those things that are right, and always to be ready to do them:
that we, who without you cannot be alive,
may have the strength to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.
Amen