Journey Through The Desert Series

Whatever it is IT is not the issue…

Bread is not the issue. God’s word is the issue…

What sustains us in life is the word of God

It is not just a meal made from stones that last until we are hungry again. The word of God teaches life so we can have our needs taken care of forever. Pleasure lasts only a moment – and often is followed with regret, guilt, and sorrow. Financial security lasts only as long as the local economy does – and we all know how unstable that can be!

When you get the Word down in your heart it will uplift you in your time of temptation – why because it teaches you about the source of real joy, incomparable peace, and pure contentment.

In other words, the word of God is the source for life~

Where does your sustenance in life come from?

Not things…

God’s word

The Village that lives by the Bible

by Clarence W. Hall

It was early in 1945 when, as a war correspondent on Okinawa, I first came upon Shimabuku, the strangest and most inspiring community I ever saw. Huddled beneath its groves of banyan and twisted pine trees, this remote village of some 1000 souls was in the path of the American advance and so received a severe shelling.

But when an advance patrol swept up to the village compound, the GI’s stopped dead in their tracks. Barring their way were two little old men; they bowed low and began to speak. The battle-hardened sergeant, wary of tricks, held up his hand, summoned an interpreter.

The interpreter shook his head. "I don’t get it. Seems we’re being welcomed as ‘fellow Christians’. One says he’s the mayor of the village, the other’s the schoolmaster. That’s a Bible the older one has in his hand..."

Guided by the two old men - Mojun Nakamura the mayor and Shosei Kina the schoolmaster - we cautiously toured the compound. We’d seen other Okinawan villages, uniformly down-at-the-heels and despairing; by contrast, this one shone like a diamond in a dung heap. Everywhere we were greeted by smiles and dignified bows.

Proudly the two old men showed us their spotless homes, their terraced fields, fertile and neat, their storehouses and granaries, their prized sugar mill.

Gravely the old men talked on, and the interpreter said, "They’ve met only one American before, long ago. Because he was a Christian they assume we are, too - though they can’t quite understand why we came in shooting."

Piecemeal, the incredible story came out. Thirty years before, an American missionary on his way to Japan had paused at Shimabuku. He’d stayed only long enough to make a pair of converts (these same two men), teach them a couple of hymns, leave them a Japanese translation of the Bible and exhort them to live by it. They’d had no contact with any Christian since. Yet during those 30 years, guided by the Bible, they had managed to create a Christian democracy at its purest.

How had it happened? Picking their way through the Bible, the two converts had found not only an inspiring "Person" on whom to pattern a life, but sound precepts on which to base their society. They’d adopted the Ten Commandments as Shimabuku’s legal code; the Sermon on the Mount as their guide to social conduct. In Kina’s school the Bible was the chief literature; it was read daily by all students, and major passages were memorised. In Nakamura’s village government the precepts of the Bible were law.