{"id":2004,"date":"2010-12-10T12:39:30","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T11:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pender.org.uk\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2010-12-10T12:39:30","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T11:39:30","slug":"all-of-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2010\/12\/all-of-them\/","title":{"rendered":"All of them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things have been critical here for the last two weeks. For some people, the bad weather has placed them in critical situations, lives have been endangered and lost. For me, the situation has not been critical in that sense. In fact, the situation has not been critical for me – I<\/strong> have been critical of the situation. I have criticised the local council for their inability to clear the roads of the snow and ice. Very critical. I have to confess that I have got quite angry about it, and felt that the anger was justified.<\/p>\n

I should know better. God knows. In fact, he has always known, and he wrote something down for me a few thousand years ago.<\/p>\n

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.The world and all its people belong to him.<\/strong> (Ps 24:1, NLT)<\/p>\n

See that little word in the middle of that? ALL<\/span><\/p>\n

All its people belong to him. Not just the good ones. Not just the ones who get things right. Not just the Christians. All its people belong to him. And that includes the numpties, the wasters, the ones who cannot\u00c2\u00a0organise anything. It includes those rioters in London. It includes the good-for-nothing, the thief, the rapist, the murderer, the terrorist.<\/p>\n

All its people belong to him. I have been getting angry at people who belong to God!<\/p>\n

Are we not all children of the same Father? Are we not all created by the same God? Then why do we betray each other, violating the covenant of our ancestors?<\/strong> (Malachi 2:10, NLT)<\/p>\n

If the answer to that is “yes” then the people I was getting angry with are also actually my relations. Is that how I should be with my own family?<\/p>\n

Christ died for me when I was still a sinner. He died for me when I was not a very nice man. He died for me so that I could be forgiven – even though I did not\u00c2\u00a0deserve\u00c2\u00a0it. He also died for all these people I have been getting angry with – people who have hurt him much, much more than they have ever or will ever hurt me!<\/p>\n

I should get angry with myself for getting angry with others, but I must not! All<\/em> of its people – that includes me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things have been critical here for the last two weeks. For some people, the bad weather has placed them in critical situations, lives have been endangered and lost. For me, the situation has not been critical in that sense. In fact, the situation has not been critical for me – I have been critical of the situation. I have criticised the local council for their inability to clear the roads of the snow and ice. Very critical. I have to confess that I have got quite angry about it, and felt that the anger was justified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[3,17,413,19,36,38,48,53],"class_list":["post-2004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","tag-bibleblogs","tag-christ","tag-christian","tag-compassion","tag-forgiveness","tag-god","tag-jesus","tag-life","category-5","description-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfWaLo-wk","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2194,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2011\/04\/well-well-will-will\/","url_meta":{"origin":2004,"position":0},"title":"Well, well! Will, will!","author":"Robert Pender","date":"05\/04\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"How big is your faith? In our Celebrate Recovery programme, we have been talking quite a bit about faith and, to help people get a grasp of what Jesus said about faith (Matthew 17:20), we gave everyone a mustard seed. If we have faith that big, we can move a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1865,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2010\/11\/can-i-help-mr-cameron\/","url_meta":{"origin":2004,"position":1},"title":"Can I help, Mr Cameron?","author":"Robert Pender","date":"28\/11\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I was interested to read that Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, is going to spend \u00c2\u00a32million on measuring the happiness of the British people. Happiness, according to the dictionary is a state of well being and contentment. I do not see a lot of contentment in the society in which we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3919,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2018\/05\/praying-at-the-right-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":2004,"position":2},"title":"Praying at the right time","author":"Robert Pender","date":"08\/05\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I once went for an interview in London and I was having a lot of trouble finding a parking space. I finally found one in a multi-storey car park and then ran to the place where the interview was being held. I arrived just in time, but after the interview\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4531,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2019\/05\/a-shadow-of-my-future-self\/","url_meta":{"origin":2004,"position":3},"title":"A shadow of my future self","author":"Robert Pender","date":"01\/05\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column width=\"1\/2\"][vc_single_image image=\"4532\" img_size=\"full\"][\/vc_column][vc_column width=\"1\/2\"][vc_column_text css=\"\"]Many years ago I had a very sore back. It would come and go every few months. First one side would hurt and, just as it was getting better, then the other side would start to hurt. I have a very vivid memory of John\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6120,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2021\/01\/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning\/","url_meta":{"origin":2004,"position":4},"title":"Let’s start at the very beginning","author":"Robert Pender","date":"29\/01\/2021","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]You might not agree with what I'm going to say, but that in itself will just prove my point. Let me begin by saying that I disagree. In fact, we all disagree. We disagree about politics, about religion, about football teams, about diets, fashion, music, money. We disagree about everything\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bible"","block_context":{"text":"Bible","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/bible\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2110,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2011\/01\/right-mountain-out-of-the-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":2004,"position":5},"title":"Right, Mountain, out of the way!","author":"Robert Pender","date":"27\/01\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend of mine will shortly set out on an amazing adventure - to climb Mount Kilimanjaro - to help raise funds for the charity Scottish Spina Bifida. I really admire him for that. It will take courage, strength and endurance. You can sponsor him if you would like to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}