“Understand this: There will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them.”

This passage was taken from St. Paul in his second letter to Timothy 3:1-5. If you have been paying attention at all, our world has immersed itself in this litany of sinful behaviors, and we are paying a very high cost for it. This is particularly true in the disregard for human life and the destruction of traditional marriage and the family.

Sometimes Christian friends ask me if we are living in the last days. My usual response is to sigh and jokingly mutter the words “promises, promises.” In light of the enormous amount of bad news flowing from the news media, one has to wonder how long God will allow this evil to continue. Beginning with the scandalous decision by the Supreme Court to arrogantly try to redefine marriage, to the revelation by so called “doctors” from Planned Parenthood on how to best extract an aborted baby so as not to “damage” its marketable body parts, we are witnessing what happens when man rejects his creator and tries to become a god unto himself.

Recently we witnessed the senseless violence with the shootings of innocent people in a church in South Carolina and a movie theater in Louisiana. An innocent young woman walking along a pier in San Francisco was shot to death by an illegal felon who had been deported five times and was given safe harbor in this so called “sanctuary city.”

St. Paul, writing in Romans 5:20, gives us this encouraging advice, “Where sin increased grace abounded all the more.”  In other words, the Lord has not left us orphans. He has given us a vast cache of spiritual weapons in his word and in his Church to engage the enemy in the battle that is being waged on the human race. Our world above all is suffering from a crisis of saints. A saint is simply someone who makes the decision to love and to give everything to the Lord, Jesus, holding nothing back!

Look at the difference one person can make in the life of a Mother Teresa, Pope Francis or the Rev. Billy Graham. Is there someone in your life who needs forgiveness? Forgive them. Is there someone whom we have neglected or turned our backs on? Reach out to them! Is there someone who is hurting and needs a friend, befriend them! Every single one of us can help put an end to evil by refusing to participate in it and instead, making the decision to love, and it starts in the home.

“Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come, we have only today, let us begin!” — Blessed Mother Teresa          

 

Scott Bute    

Alden