All the Earth

Pastor Duck's Devotional 

Taiwan Church News 2643, October 27, 2002 

Translated by David Alexander 

The Lord our God - his judgments are in all the earth. (Psalm 105:7) 

The home of A-tat's family is in an apartment building. On each floor there are 4 flats. On one side of A-tat's house the flat is rented by a foreign English teacher who comes from Canada. Because A-tat speaks a little English, he invited her to accompany him to church, in Taiwanese, one Sunday. Though she didn't understand a word, she seemed very familiar with Christian worship. A-tat asked her if she was a Christian, and she told him how in her hometown she had attended church every Sunday from birth through high school. But after she left her town to attend university, she had dropped out. Only when she goes home to visit her rural parents does she go to church. A-tat asked if she had tried to find an English church to attend while in Taiwan, and she told him that while in Taiwan she was "taking a holiday from God." 

Another family who lives on that floor just returned to Taiwan after living in Canada for 6 years. A-tat's mother invited them to church, and they told how, while in Canada they had become part of a Taiwanese overseas church. They attended worship, suppers and outings, and the father had sung in the choir. But, they said, now that they had returned to their homeland they had Taiwanese people all around them and didn't need to go to church to have the "homeland feeling". 

Besides, they had worshipped Jesus in Canada (where Jesus is God) and now they would worship Tho-ti-kong (the earth god) and Matsu (the sea goddess) in Taiwan, where they are the gods. 

No matter where we may go, even as far as Canada, No matter how far a person is from her home, even as far away as Taiwan, we are never so far away that God takes a vacation from us, or forgets us. Because the Lord is our God, his judgments are in all the earth. 

Prayer: God of all times and places, show us your truth here and now. AMEN