My Trust in My Lord

Posted by Anne Rice on Newsweek - March 21, 2008
My Trust in My Lord
Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.
A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.
And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.
Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love.
Right now as I write this, our nation seems to be in some sort of religious delirium. Anti-God books dominate the bestseller lists; people claim to deconstruct the Son of Man with facile historical treatments of what we know and don’t know about Jesus Christ who lived in First Century Judea. Candidates for public office have to declare their faith on television. Christians quarrel with one another publicly about the message of Christ.
Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet.
And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.
On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.
This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.
Within days of my return to Christ, I also became aware of something very important: that the first temptation we face as returning Christians is to criticize another Christian and his or her way of approaching Jesus Christ. I perceived that I had to resist that temptation, that I had to seek in my faith and in my love for God a complete certainty that He knew all about these factions and disputes, and that He knew who was right or who was wrong, and He would handle how and when He approached every single soul.
Why do I talk so much about this trust now? Because I think perhaps that with many Christians it is lacking, and in saying this I’m yielding to the temptation I just described. But let me speak my peace not critically so much as with an exhortation. Trust in Him. If you believe in Him, then trust Him. Trust what He says in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and trust what He says about having conquered evil; trust that He has won.
Don’t ever succumb to the fear that evil is winning in this world, no matter how bad things may appear. Don’t ever succumb to the fear that He does not witness our struggles, that He is not with every single soul.
The Sermon on the Mount is the portion of the New Testament to which I return again and again. I return to the simple command: “Love your enemies.” And each day brings me closer to understanding that in this message lies the blueprint for bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth. The Sermon on the Mount is the full blueprint. And it is not impossible to love our enemies and our neighbors, but it may be the hardest thing we have ever been asked to do.
But we can’t doubt the possibility of it. We must return to Jesus Christ again and again, after our failures, and seek in Him --- in His awesome majesty and power -- the creative solutions to the problems we face. We must retain our commitment to Him, and our belief in a world in which, conceivably, human beings could lay down their arms, and stretch out their arms to one another, clasping hands, and bring about a total worldwide peace.
If this is not inconceivable, then it is possible. And perhaps we are, in our own broken and often blind fashion, moving towards such a moment. If we can conceive of it and dedicate ourselves to it, then this peace on earth, this peace in Christ, can come.
As we experience Easter week, we celebrate the crucifixion that changed the world. We celebrate the Resurrection that sent Christ’s apostles throughout the Roman Empire to declare the Good News. We celebrate one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known: that of a God who would come down here to live and breathe with us in a human body, who would experience human death for us, and then rise to remind us that He was, and is, both Human and Divine. We celebrate the greatest inversion the world has ever recorded: that of the Maker dying on a Roman cross.
Let us celebrate as well that throughout this troubled world in which we live, billions believe in this 2,000-year-old love story and in this great inversion -- and billions seek to trust the Maker to bring us to one another in love as He brings us to Himself.
Anne RIce is the best-selling author of 27 books, including "The Vampire Chronicles" and "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt." Read an excerpt of her latest book, "Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana."

Major markets still in a downtrend

According to the Bullmonitor.com the major stock markets are still in a long-term downtrend. The cascading fallout from the subprime loan crisis, barely a cloud on the horizon a year ago, is now viewed by experts as the biggest threat to the global economy.

Who is Kgalema Motlanthe?

South Africa's next president-in-waiting?

Kgalema Motlanthe is a prominent South African political personality and is currently the Deputy President of the African National Congress.

Motlanthe has been the only ANC leader who has risked his political reputation by publicly defending sacked Deputy President Jacob Zuma in the face of widespread allegations of corruption against Zuma.

Motlanthe is a former trade unionist who has support across the ANC-led tripartite alliance. Many in the ANC describe him as an independent thinker who is not afraid to speak his mind.

There is growing support for the idea that deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe must be sent to parliament immediately to take over as caretaker president while Zuma deals with the Mbeki-instigated NPA court case of humiliation.

Motlanthe who was born in 1949, grew up influenced by the revolutionary ideologies of the Black Consciousness Movement which was led by Steven Bantu Biko. He was detained by Apartheid Government in 1977 the year after the infamous 1976 Soweto student uprising at the age of 28. In 1976 he was detained for 11 months for pursuing the aims of the liberation movement African National Congress. He was later sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on Robben Island. Shortly after his release he was elected Secretary-General of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). In 1997 when politician-businessman Cyril Ramaphosa retired from politics, Kgalema was elected Secretary-General of the ANC.

Dow Jones Industrial Index Chart

Asians stocks have closed sharply lower again today. The DJII should find support at about 11000 and strong support at 10500.

The Baltic Dry Index Drops

The Baltic Dry Index, is now down about 28% since its peak in October. This raises some important issues about global growth going forward.
The Baltic Dry Index is a number issued daily by the Baltic Exchange, a London-based organization whose members arrange for ocean transport of industrial bulk commodities from producers to end users.
Every day they survey brokers around the world to find out how much it costs to book cargoes of raw materials on a variety of shipping routes.
The answers are then reformulated as the Baltic Dry Index.
Now, why is the Baltic Dry Index considered important?
Well, first off, it's not a speculative index. In other words, no one is out there bidding up the Baltic Dry Index because they believe shipping costs will change in the future.
Instead, it tracks the actual cost of shipping raw materials by sea based on real cargo bookings and is therefore considered a pretty good indicator of global trade volumes.
For those without access to Bloomberg, the Web site Investment Tools.com has updated Baltic Dry Index data available.

Winnie Mandela tops ANC election list

Many law-abiding South Africans are concerned that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela won first place in the election of a new ANC National Executive Committee with 2845 votes - more than 500 votes more than Jacob Zuma garnered in his race against national President Thabo Mbeki.

Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of Nelson Mandela, resigned from parliament and the ANC in 2003 after she was convicted of fraud. She has not been a member of the ANC since then. In 1991 she was convicted of kidnapping a child activist, Stompie Seipei, who was later found murdered. Her prison sentence was reduced on appeal to a fine.

A few other convicted criminals, including Tony Yengeni, were also elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. If these convicted criminals are allowed to govern after the next election, then South Africa will collapse.

Who really murdered Stompie Seipei?

I SWEAR...: Mandela United Football Club "coach" and convicted
killer Jerry Richardson takes the oath before testifying at the Truth and
Reconciliation hearing in Johannesburg. Richardson is serving a life sentence
for the murder of teenage activist Stompie Seipei. (AP)

'Coach was told to kill Seipei'

JOHANNESBURG -- Stompie Seipei was killed on Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's
instructions to prevent the Mandela "crisis committee" discovering how
badly the Mandela United Football Club had assaulted four youths they had
abducted from the Soweto Methodist manse, the commission heard yesterday. Former
club "coach" Jerry Richardson testified that Mrs Madikizela-Mandela
decided to kill Stompie to cover up what had happened. The Mandela crisis
committee, made up of church, community and ANC leaders, was formed to secure
the release of four boys, including Stompie, who were abducted from Methodist
minister Paul Verryn's manse in late December 1988. "I slaughtered him (Stompie)
like a goat," Richardson said, as Stompie's mother, Joyce, left the hall in
tears. Richardson said he abducted Stompie on Mrs Madikizela-Mandela's
instructions after Mr Verryn was falsely accused of sodomising the boys.
Richardson said: "I killed Stompie under instructions of Mami (Mrs
Madikizela-Mandela)." He said he and another football club member,
"Slash", went to look for a place where they could kill Stompie. They
decided on a rocky patch of ground near a railway line in Noordgesig, Soweto.
Richardson said the plan to kill Stompie, several days after the abduction and
assault, had to be postponed because a lot of visitors, including the crisis
committee, kept coming to Mrs Madikizela-Mandela's house. Richardson said the
visitors included former South African Council of Churches' secretary-general
Frank Chikane. Richardson said Mrs Madikizela-Mandela hid him (Richardson) so
the visitors could not speak to him. "Mami was concerned the crisis
committee would discover the presence of the youth in her yard." He said
Stompie was more severely beaten than the other three youths because Mrs
Madikizela-Mandela accused him of being an impimpi (police informer). He said
Mrs Madikizela-Mandela had participated in the beating, punching the youths with
her fist. Richardson said the football club had tortured youths in
"horrible, brutal ways ... in the manner used to torture freedom fighters
(by the police)". A few days later, Richardson and Slash took Stompie to
the site in Noordgesig they had chosen. Richardson said he had to help Stompie
walk because "he was very sick and very weak". When they reached the
site, Richardson said he made Stompie lie on his back and separated a pair of
garden shears. He said he stabbed Stompie in the neck. Senior state pathologist
Dr Patricia Klepp said that during her autopsy of Stompie's body, she found two
stab marks behind his right ear and a larger stab mark on the left side of his
neck. -- DDC

The following article was published in the Daily Dispatch on Thursday,
December 4, 1997, about the Soweto slaughters which were ordered by Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela in 1989.

JOHANNESBURG -- Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ordered the killing of young
activists Lolo Sono and Tony Tshabalala who were "slaughtered like
goats" and whose bodies were buried near a mine dump in Soweto in December
1988, former Mandela United Football Club "coach" Jerry Richardson
testified yesterday. Richardson was giving evidence on the eighth day of the
hearing into the alleged reign of terror conducted by President Nelson Mandela's
former wife, Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and the now disbanded Mandela United
Football Club in Soweto during the late 1980s. Describing events leading up to
the death of the two activists, Richardson, who was convicted for the 1989
killing of teenager Stompie Seipei, said he "worked with the police".
His handler, the hearing heard, was a Sergeant Stefanus Pretorius. Sgt Pretorius
was killed along with two MK soldiers in a shootout at Richardson's home which
the MK members were using as refuge on November 9 1988. Richardson said that
after this incident he came under suspicion from other Mandela United Football
Club members of being a police spy. As a consequence he feared for his life.
However, suspicion then focused on Sono and Tshabalala who visited Richardson's
home just before the shootout, said Richardson. The two youths were apprehended
several days later and taken to Mrs Madikizela-Mandela's Diepkloof, Soweto,
home. Here they were severely beaten, with Richardson taking part. Richardson
said a decision was taken to kill the youths and dump their bodies near
Mzimhlope in Soweto. He said the young men were driven to the mine dump.
Football club members Guyboy Kubheke and another called Ninja took the youths,
who were bound by their hands and feet, into the veld. Richardson said he and
Shakes Tau followed with spades and shovels. "When we got there Guyboy was
busy killing them, slaughtering them like a goat," said Richardson.
"As soon as we finished slaughtering them, we went to Madikizela-Mandela's
house to give a report back." Richardson also claimed that Mrs Madikizela-Mandela
ordered that a young woman, Ms Kuki Zwane, should be killed for disobedience. Ms
Zwane apparently had been ordered to terminate her relationship with football
club member Sizwe Sithole, otherwise known as Butile, who was the boyfriend of
Mrs Madikizela-Mandela's daughter, Zinzi. Richardson described how he killed Ms
Zwane and dumped her body near the Orlando railway station. "I stabbed her,
slit her throat and dumped her body," he said. -- Sapa