GN Commentary: January 6, 2010 - When All Else Fails...

The Bible serves to guide us in times of trouble, illuminate our paths, and reassure us about the future.

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Video Transcript

"When all else fails, read the instructions." That old saying is good advice as we struggle with our electronic gizmos, getting frustrated because we can't quite get them to work the way we wish. Eventually we may hit the "Help" button, or even go old-fashioned and pull out the instruction manual.

It would seem the same principle applies to life. How to make it work? As we enter a new year and a new decade, the world is a very troubled place. A survey of the news in the last days of 2009 and the first days of 2010 reveals attempts to blow up airliners in midair; released terrorists returning to a life of evil; troubles in places such as Afghanistan and Iran; and record cold temperatures in many parts of the world, so cold it's even taken the lives of some elderly and infirm. Meanwhile, though we hear assurances of an economy in recovery, many don't see evidence of it in their own lives: unemployment remains stubbornly high, and job losses and small business closures continue to mount.

Where to turn in the midst of this New Year's angst? Perhaps the old saying holds the key: "When all else fails, read the instruction manual." Of that manual, Noah Webster once declared "The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions." And back in the nineteenth century, minister Henry Ward Beecher declared "Sink the Bible to the bottom of the sea, and man's obligation to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and his guide would be gone; he would have the same voyage to make; only his compass and chart would be overboard."

The compass, the chart, the instruction manual—the Book of books—serves to guide us in times of trouble, illuminate our paths, and reassure us about the future. All much needed in this troubling new decade.

So how about it? Let's read and study life's instruction manual—the Bible. And let's receive God's guidance and reassurance through these troubled times.

For GN Magazine, I'm Ralph Levy.