Thought for the week: Conveying God's message with a sense of gladness

Each horse galloped at speed for about 12 miles and then another horse and rider took over.

For the Pony Express their days were numbered. Ezra Cornell organised Western Union Telegraph and took the first line through to California in 1861, killing off the Pony Express in the process. Getting the news out was the communicator's challenge.

"Like cold water to a weary soul, so is good news from a distant land". So reads Proverbs 25, verse 25. Just as the eye feeds on light and the body on food, so the mind quests information. This quest is likened to the desert dweller searching for water. The verse coming out of a desert culture is an effective image.

Life outside of time and beyond the physical faculties fascinates humankind and a case can be made for the thesis that when genuine religion declines, interest in and experimenting with occult practices increase. When society denies the greatness of God, it lapses imto belief in ghosts and fables. But the soul's hunger goes on and life is impoverished.

From a distance land Good News has come. The soul refreshing river of salvation rises high in the hills of eternity and floods the plains of human habitation.

Here is love vast as the ocean, loving-kindness as a flood. The residents of California had to wait 12 days for their newspapers, but the offer of the saving grace of God is available to us in the here and now. The news was brought by a pony and zealous rider, but the message of salvation has come to us by the Lord Himself, imcompehensibly made man.

Early 20th century American preacher Vance Havner once wrote: "The Gospel makes some people sad, some mad and some glad. It is better that people should go out of church mad, than merely go out neither sad, mad, nor glad".