4 Minute Devotions: Georgia on My Mind

The Russian invasion of Georgia has deeply affected me. Why is God once more allowing nations to go to war?

Podcast version here

Proverbs 22:3 A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.

The people of Georgia are on my mind today. I don’t mean the Southern State; I’m talking about the sovereign nation in Eurasia, where Russian tanks invaded last Friday.

I can remember reading somewhere that history repeats itself when we don’t learn from our mistakes. This Russian invasion reminds me of when Hitler entered the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and when the Soviets invaded Hungary. The world did little about those situations – one caused a world war and the other started the Cold War.

I don’t want to go back to those days of fearing a nuclear holocaust, and I don’t want my children to feel the same. Georgia is on my mind today, so I pray that the world will come to its senses to put an end to this invasion and fighting. If not, then we seem doomed to go through another Cold War of distrust, suspicion, and insecurity.

I sometimes ask God why humans are so intent on killing one another. Throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of people are killed each year by other people. What other creature on earth does this? Why does God elevate us to divine heights and allow us to bring ourselves down into inhumane hell? Why doesn’t God stop this, punish the wicked, and recreate a new world where peace, harmony, and love dwell? Is God sleeping or is He crazy, expecting things to be different, by allowing us to do the same things over and over again?

I don’t understand it and I want God to intervene, but that would mean giving up free will and bringing history to an end. Things look bleak for the Georgians and perhaps there will be no easy solution to this crisis. All that I can do is wait and pray, hope and ask God to deliver the Georgian people from the Russian invaders. But why do I feel as if I’ve been here before? Why does this seem to be divine déjà vu?

Prayer: Lord God, history is a great mystery and sometimes the living of these days is hard to endure. We pray for the people of Georgia and we ask that You protect them. We do not know where these events are taking us, but we claim safety and refuge in You alone. Help the world heal. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.

How To Tame a Dragon

The Olympic Games are just a season away and within the next couple of weeks athletes from around the world will be competing for places on their national teams. For years, many of these young people will have been preparing themselves to physically and mentally peak during this summer. They will have lofty ambitions and seek to gain international reputations by the winning coveted medals for their countries.

They will represent the best of humanity’s strongest, fastest and most competitive people. They are the elite athletes of the world. Throughout the summer, the hype, publicity, and commercial exploitation of the Games will take place in practically every nation on earth. Theoretically, it will be a time to lay down our arms and pick up our running shoes. It is a quadrennial event when we aspire as a species to live at peace with one another and joyfully compete. The Games symbolize the greatness, grandeur, and godliness of humankind.

But there is a shadow over this year’s Games. The host nation, China, is an unworthy venue for the Olympics. China’s human rights abuses, religious persecutions, and contempt for democracy and liberty makes it the 21st century’s equivalent of Nazi Germany. Despite giving assurances that they would do something about these internal problems eight years ago, the Chinese authorities have instead increased their inhumane practices of political executions, religious intolerance, and tyrannical policing of their nation.

In a civilized world, the evil excesses of China should not be condoned by presenting the Games in the heart of an oppressive regime. The dictatorship of Communist China dishonors the heart, spirit, and majesty of the Olympics. They are abusing the privilege of hosting the World. They should be held accountable for their human rights atrocities and boycotted for their abuse of religious minorities.

I will not watch the Olympics, nor will I esteem any new sporting records or applaud any athletes who accomplish their goals. I will not buy into the “let’s keep politics out of sports’ mentality that passes for civilized sophistry amongst sports commentators, newspapers, and television channels. China, under its present totalitarian leadership, is a bloody stain upon human rights and freedom. I will not make myself a hypocrite by watching an oppressive nation use the Olympics as propaganda to deceive its own people.

In the 20th century, the whole world made terrible mistakes by allowing Nazi Germany to host the Olympics. It seems that in the dawn of this new century, we are about to embark on a course that will see us make the same mistakes. If there is no boycott of the Games by our leaders, then we had better prepare ourselves for war in the next decade, because the Beijing will treat our acquiescence as decadent weakness, just as Hitler did in the 1930s.

Remember this: after the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games, the tyrannical Soviet Union collapsed within a decade; but three years after the participation of all nations at the 1936 Berlin Games, the World was involved in total war.

If we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat history.