"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you a hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

As we stand on the brink of a new year, thinking men and women cannot help but be concerned. Those of us in America are looking upon a nation that we hardly recognize anymore. Our cities are crime-ridden and filled with illegal drug use. Our borders are being opened in such a way as to allow thousands of people a day from who knows where to enter our country to do who knows what. Regardless of what we think about open borders, we cannot deny the tremendous impact these "undocumented" people are having upon our resources. We have so many illegals in the state I live in that we are having to spend millions of dollars just to transport them to other states who frankly don't have the capability to take care of them either.

We have elections where we cannot even tell who is voting nor what the actual count is. Our banks can handle millions of transactions involving billions of dollars a day, but we cannot seem to be able to figure out how to correctly count the votes in a single election. Think about that for a moment: Not only can we figure out to the penny the transfer of billions of dollars between multiple institutions, but we can also do it in an accurate and timely way and even know the exact identity of the person behind each transaction. Yet, we are expected to believe that the counting of a few million votes is so incredibly complicated that we sometimes need months to tally them and still have no idea who actually cast these votes nor how many times they voted in the first place. Third world countries can count their votes in a few hours. It kind of makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes, doesn't it?

We have diseases that are now shutting down entire countries every few years. In our medically advanced world, it seems unreasonable that we have so devolved in our ability to take care of the sick that our response should be to lock people behind doors in order to keep them well. We have traffic cameras that can tell who ran a stop light in a city on the other side of the planet. We have DNA technology so advanced that we can tell who committed a crime 30 years ago. Yet we claim we cannot tell where a disease has originated nor who was responsible for it when all of the evidence points to a problem that was engineered by humans, not nature. Then those in charge come up with "cures" that end up being just as deadly as the illness. 

Thanks for the pep talk!

But what can we do? Is it too late for us?

These are the types of questions that righteous people surely must have asked during Jeremiah's time. They, too, lived in a nation that was filled with sin, corruption and violence. They, too, were beaten down with one crisis after another. They, too, were left reeling from the effects of corrupt leaders and incompetent officials. But do you know what they found? They found that the problems that were so prolific in their times were still solvable. God Himself revealed to them that they didn't have to look forward to a continually declining nation - at least not if they were willing to do something about it. The fact is that there have always been periods within our history that have been filled with seemingly insurmountable problems, and righteous people have always been expected by God to do something about these problems. 

Think about that: Even if they didn't think that they were responsible for the problems, they were still responsible for the cures!

Righteous men and women have always had the unpleasant duty of cleaning up after the mess that the unrighteous have left. Why is that, we might be wondering? Maybe it's because we allowed so many of these problems to happen in the first place. We stood idly by when we could have stopped the cancer from advancing, but we thought someone else would surely take care of it. We were often content to pretend that these problems were not our problems so we just went on with our lives, We hired and appointed and elected people to take care of the problems, but we found that didn't work. Usually the people who were willing to fill these positions were the problem in the first place. There is a common sense rule we all seemed to have forgotten, in that you should never permit the person who committed the crime to decide what the punishment should be. The punishment that these sociopaths come up with always involves more pain for the innocent. We need to wake up and figure that out.

So, what is the solution? It's simply this. If we truly want to do something about the sin in this wicked world then we are going to have to take a personal role. We are going to have to repent of our own sins first. We are going to have to turn to God's Word to see what He wants. We are going to have to earnestly and regularly pray for guidance. And... we are then going to have to act!

It's a big challenge, I know, but it is possible to fix the problems we have. How do I know this? Because God has promised that He has plans to prosper us, not to harm us. But this promise has always, always, always been only for the righteous who have been willing to live a life in obedience to His will. It has never been meant for an unrepentant and evil people. If we want righteous change then we are going to have to have righteous effort in accomplishing that change. It will be hard, but it can be done. Our children deserve that change, so we must work towards it. It is not too late, but we have to start now!

It begins by returning to God. If you find that you have drifted apart from Him, perhaps the best efforts for this new year could be spent in getting back to Him. It's not too late for the righteous, but the righteous do have to start. Why not devote yourself to God in this new year to do just that?