{"id":232,"date":"2014-03-10T21:29:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T21:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scotlandneedsthegospel.org\/blog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2014-06-16T23:32:04","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T23:32:04","slug":"from-a-distance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"From a Distance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Twin<\/a>A number of news outlets have recently published a photograph of New York taken by the American astronaut Frank Culbertson from the International Space Station on September 11 2001. This shocking image has reawakened for many of us a sense of the horror and impotence that we felt when we first heard of these attacks.\u00a0There is something especially powerful though about an image from space. In her 1987 album ‘Lone Star State of Mind’, the American singer Nanci Griffith recorded the Julie Gold song, “From a Distance”.<\/p>\n

“From a distance the world looks blue and green
\nAnd the snow-capped mountains white
\nFrom a distance the ocean meets the stream
\nAnd the eagle takes to flight<\/p>\n

From a distance we all have enough
\nAnd no one is in need
\nThere are no guns, no bombs, no diseases
\nNo hungry mouths to feed”<\/p>\n

The singer sums up the beauty, and the remoteness, of the view of this world from space. That trail of smoke that drifts across the photograph could be anything … but because we have been told, we know it is not. Where I part company with the song lyrics is when Griffith sings, “God is watching us, God is watching us \/\u00a0God is watching us from a distance”. For a moment, we could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that the view from the International Space Station is somehow analogous to the Divine perspective of earth. But it isn’t! \u00a0God said to Abraham, “Because\u00a0the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave,\u00a0\u00a0I will go down to see whether they have done altogether\u00a0according to the outcry that has come to me” (Gen. 18 vs20,21). Of course the language is figurative, but the point is clear, God knows exactly how this world is behaving. More relevantly, God sees exactly how I am behaving – and this is no remote view, the Lord Jesus reinforced the point when He said, “Why,\u00a0even the hairs of your head are all numbered”, Luke 12 vs7.<\/p>\n

Whether we view the intimate Divine knowledge as a blessing or as a threat very much depends on the basis of our relationship with Him! I take it as a great comfort that even if the true perpetrators of 9\/11 are never brought to justice and even if the reaction against this outrage by the ‘West’ has perhaps resulted in even more injustice and suffering, there is a Divine eye upon the throne that will see that justice is finally done. But what about my life? What about the petty injustices that I am guilty of? The ‘Judge of all the Earth’ cannot simply ignore these. Thankfully, the Divine perspective came even closer. The prophet Isaiah could write,\u00a0“Surely he has borne our griefs\u00a0and carried our sorrows;\u00a0yet we esteemed him stricken,\u00a0smitten by God, and afflicted.\u00a0But he was wounded for our transgressions;\u00a0he was crushed for our iniquities;\u00a0upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,\u00a0and with his stripes we are healed.\u00a0All we like sheep have gone astray;\u00a0we have turned every one to his own way;\u00a0and the LORD\u00a0has laid on him\u00a0the iniquity of us all”, Isaiah 53 vs4-6. God has sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, right down to where we are – to take the responsibility for my injustices and to pay the penalty for my sin! God knows all about me, yet “God so loved\u00a0the world,\u00a0that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not\u00a0perish but have eternal life”, John 3 vs16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of news outlets have recently published a photograph of New York taken by the American astronaut Frank Culbertson from the International Space Station on September 11 2001. This shocking image has reawakened for many of us a sense of the horror and impotence that we felt when we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[32,31],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel","tag-justice","tag-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb2kTD-3K","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotlandneedsthegospel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}