News

News comes to us in so many different ways these days. A long time ago you would only get news from a person who had travelled many miles to bring it to you. Kings and rules would post notices on billboards to let people know what they had to do. Then we progressed to newspapers and radios. Now we have television, phones, computers, newspapers and ipads but they still tell us the same news often over and over and over again. It tends to make us tired of hearing it, why, mostly because it’s rarely good news that gets repeated.

When John the Baptist, starting telling people that the Messiah was about to come, it was good news. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Mark 1:3. When Jesus told the people how to have their sins forgiven, that was good news. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” John 1:12 When Jesus healed the blind, crippled and sick, these people went out and told others the good news. John 9.

On the other hand when Jesus told the church leaders of His time that they were not doing the right thing, that was bad news and they didn’t like it either. They wanted to stone him. “Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.” John 8:59

When we have to tell people bad news we are often worried about how they will react. So let us do it in the strength that comes from having a loving saviour and not repeat it so often that they get sick of hearing about it.