Well I'm back in Greece after two weeks and a half traveling around in Skandinavia. I went to Finland for the anual Skippers' Conference, then on to Sweden for a visit to the Shalom ministry - which is another mission boat, and then finaly I took some time off (my long awaited summer vacation), 10 days to be more exact where I just relaxed with Shirley, my sister, in Denmark. So yes I did 3 of the 6 nordic countries in two weeks - it felt like I was 16 again interrailing with some of my very good friends, Colleen and Per amongst others. Anyway I'm going to tell you all about my trip when I have more time.
Anyway what I really wanted to tell you guys about was that last Sunday my pastor, Steve Duton, started off his sermon in a rather interesting way. He gave an illustration that I thought was quite shocking actually. His sermon was on integrity and gave this example to jumpstart it:
"How would you like to work for a company, which has fewer than 600 employees. Of those 600 employees ...
29 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have bankrupted at least two businesses
3 have been arrested for assault
71 can't get a credit card because of bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 are current defendants in lawsuits.
And in 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving."
Now would you really like to work for a company where those people would be your co-workers? That's 373 of 600 of your co-workers, or 62%, would be part of those affore mentioned, probably not right? Well what if I told you that this company actually exists and those are actual facts and numbers about the employees there? Shocking isn't it? What's even more shocking is the name of that company....can you guess it? Well it's the United States Congress!!! One of the most influencial countries, if not the most influencial country of the world has 62% of its leaders with such characters! I find that actually really scary! Forget fraud and bad credit but spousal abuse, assault, drugs, SHOPLIFTING (don't these people have money?!!), and drunk driving!!! These are not exactly upstanding citizens. I think that this gives us all something to think about. People I think that we all need to get on our hands and feet in prayer for our governments! Now this is the US government, but who are we kidding, other governments are no better! I bet we have just as much corruption in the French, English, German etc. governments. What would happen if we started praying for our governments? For our leaders? I want to believe that we would see changes. 29 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have bankrupted at least two businesses
3 have been arrested for assault
71 can't get a credit card because of bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 are current defendants in lawsuits.
And in 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving."
I have a question to all the leaders out there - How can you expect your people to be upstanding and follow the law when you don't even do it? Set examples for everybody and the world might actually become a better place.
Someone once said - if you want to change the world start in your own backyard. Well that's what we need to do! Let's clean up our governments, our leaders, our nations, if everybody would clean up in their own houses there would be no need for others to do it!
Anyway I just really wanted to say this. I was really surprised and really shocked as well as sad when I heard this. Let's think about this people and let's think about ways we can change and clean our backyard.
God bless
