Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

China has been seeping into the news lately.

Politics goes in cycles. First it's Africa, then the Middle East. People pouring into other countries. Islamic armies attacking. Then it's Russia, blamed for meddling with elections and trying to start a war. Now it is China, repressing Christians, monitoring all its citizens, and bugging our phones, computers, and war planes.

The media goes in cycles, too. Every problem they cover is the biggest problem to hit the world, ever —until something else dominates the airwaves. It's show biz. Their job is not to deliver the news. It is to deliver eyes to advertisers. It's truly about "the love of money" (1 Timothy 6:10).

We Christians get pulled off-track from the only thing God entrusted us with, the gospel, We can't armchair theorize our way out of the messes we are in. It's just wasting our time.

The Devil wants us distracted. I have seen a pattern. Each time a new story grips the world, some people stop buying tracts! When the "crisis" is over, or out of the news, the tract sales start up again, slowly. The Devil wants to give us as many crises as possible, to get us to stop spreading the gospel —the only thing the Lord Jesus told us to do!

But we Christians are called to follow another set of cycles: the law of sowing and reaping. You always reap what you sow, later than you sow, and more than you sow. If we sow faith, we can reap the fruit that comes from faith. If we sow doubt, we also reap its bitter fruit.

While the world is distracted with politics and "news, weather and sports," we have the opportunity to sow faith with gospel tracts: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in His shed blood to pay for their sins. And faith that God preserved His words to show us how to live our lives.

As we move closer to the End, we will hear of many "wars and rumours of wars" (Matthew 24:6). Let's be about the one thing God wants us to do: "Occupy till I come" (Luke 19:13) and use the gospel message to win a lost and distracted world.

In Christ Jesus, and for His service,