It's been a busy weekend so far. Friday evening was a blur of completing the design for another component of 2MX till around 8PM, followed by some strenuous Badminton at Otters. I'm not good at Badminton by any means and this means that playing for even a short while tends to give me a pretty good work-out... so there are benefits of being bad at some things :-)
To finish off the evening Minoli and I had a quick dinner at Queen's with our badminton partners Ronnie and Shiranthi (and their little brat disguised as a son Yudheesh). It was once more past midnight when we got home making it the 8th day in a row that we got to bed after midnight.

We did sleep late on Saturday ... oh what a luxury. Both Minoli and I had to prepare for church activities over the weekend. The monthly praise and worship service on Saturday and the English service on Sunday at the Maradana Methodist Church where I was preaching. I preached on Gen 20. There was a very small crowd which was dissapointing but I'm hopeful that it wasn't the preacher that kept the people away. This is what I stressed on -

Abraham was insecure - he feared for his life.

Abraham lacked the trust in God’s faithfulness and providence to be sure that God would protect his family.

Abraham sinned when he tried to handle the situation on his own without relying on God.

How can we apply the lessons that jump out of this passage into our lives?

Are there threats to our security (our insecurities) that we feel God is incapable of handling? Security is easy to understand in Sri Lanka. Politicians and the armed forces of our country are at a very high level of risk at present due to the recent killings by the Terrorists. The public in general have no guarantee that they will not be caught up in a bomb blast at any given time. In the north and the east of Sri Lanka too, civilians are unsure of what their future holds.

Would it be wrong for people in such a situation to attempt to go to another country where they would be more secure? We’ve seen and heard of many friends and loved ones leaving. Should we too be seeking to leave Sri Lanka? Should we use our influence, contacts, our intelligence and shrewdness to get the visas or money required to get to where we think we will be safe.

Often unknowingly we do the same thing Abraham did. We take things into our own hands; not realizing that our God is able to watch over us and protect us, EVEN if we were to be caught up in a bomb blast or our childrens education or businesses were to be threatened and destroyed because of the instability in our land.

For every Christian that leaves the shores of this land, the task of reaching our unsaved neighbors only becomes harder. Our calling is to bring people into God’s kingdom.

It is not only in leaving Sri Lanka that we can become like Abraham. We can stay very comfortably in our homes and never put ourselves at risk or even make ourselves uncomfortable. This might be as harmful as Abraham’s lies. Our lie would be saying that we are Christian’s and yet denying God control of our lives that makes our Christianity alive and real.

The message was well received. I got some feedback that was encouraging from a Hindu convert lady who said that she had not seen the passage in that light before. I hope the other 10 or so people too were touched by the message.

We are thinking of watching a movie this evening - Water - it had got good review. Hope its worth it - I'm not known to be a fan of Indian movies.