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Why would God want us to be obedient?

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Obedience. There seems to be a real antagonism in UK culture to the idea that the God who created us should dare to demand our obedience. I see that antagonism reflected in government policy and media indoctrination that questions the idea that parents have the ultimate responsibility to teach their children to be obedient to them.

If you don’t have children and maybe even if you do, you may not want to teach your children to be obedient. You may feel that it is enough to love them. Even that if you love children they will naturally learn how to be the best they can be.

I doubt many parents can avoid the need for some training of their child to obey commands. Parents who do not teach their children to be obedient, at least in some ways are likely to watch their children suffer in miriad ways…

Burns inflicted because they got too close to a fire…

Fingers sliced after picking up a kitchen knife…

Broken bones after falling down stairs…

I could go on.

As a father I have taught each of my children to be obedient to me in order to protect them from danger until such time as they are able to discern and avoid that danger themselves.

It makes perfect sense then that the God who created us and sees himself as our Father in Heaven would have a perspective that wants us to obey his commands, in order that we are protected from danger that we might be unable to perceive.

Yet in our arrogance, like a stubborn child, we all too often think we know best, or simply just want to do something and do not care about the consequences.

I choose to believe that the God who created fathers, who sees himself as a father, has our best interests at heart.

Happy Fathers Day

Another lightbulb moment

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I know electric cars don’t use fuel. Everyone knows that, right? Not unleaded, not diesel. It’s kind of obvious. Perhaps too obvious?

When we got use of a demo electric car – a Nissan Leaf, apart from setting off, it was no different to normal driving. Setting off is seriously weird though! There is literally no noise, apart from a slight whine which apparently they have had to add to warn pedestrians… You just press your foot on the acelerator, the car begins to move and inside the car you can’t even hear that whine. It feels surreal. Once you pick up speed, the sound of the tyres on the road and cars passing makes it feel more normal.

Anyway… The Nissan Leaf doesn’t use fuel. Though it does need charging…

I forgot to take a record of the mileage before we left the dealership, so did so once we got home. I charged the Leaf using a normal three pin UK socket for a few hours in the evening and again for a couple of hours the next morning.

As well as a kind of “battery life remaining” dial that looks a bit like a fuel gauge, the Leaf shows estimated miles you can travel. By the time I unplugged our Tekna model, the charge was up to 107 miles. You can see this on the right of the image below:

We drove pretty much as normal the next morning – Saturday – with a mix of city and motorway driving. As you can see from the next image, we drove a total of 49 miles and took our remaining miles down by 55 miles to 52:

The Leaf is an electric car… So, we had used the fans and the radio and the heater and played around with the gadgets available. You use electricity in an electric car and it does impact the distance you will be able to travel. But not by much…

I still wasn’t convinced. We were looking at just under £280 a month for three years plus £1,000 deposit on a PCP deal for a second hand car. £11,080 in total, £3694 a year. Far more than we’d ever paid for a car.

Except, the Leaf was really nice. We’ve wanted an electric car for years. Still tempting.

That’s when I had my next lightbulb moment…

You already know this right, so feel free to have a laugh. The Leaf is an electric car. It doesn’t use fuel. Fuel costs money. Money we wouldn’t have to pay each month…

I did a rough calculation of how much we spend on petrol each month (we actually have two cars just now so this is just for the car we’d be replacing.) £108 a month we’d save on petrol.

I travel roughly 170 miles a week on that £108. Per month that would be 736 (170 X 4.33) Nissan estimates it costs £0.02 a mile to charge if you charge using a low rate. Even if you double that, that would cost £29.45 a month, saving £78.55 a month.

Which would bring the monthly total cost of the Leaf (including the deposit) down to £230. (£3694 a year divided by 12 = £307.83 less £78.55)

£230 a month. It’s starting to seem affordable…

Flash Fiction: The world is ending

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All my life savings, that’s all it took to save me from the end of the world. I still can’t believe my luck, that I managed to get away. The boat was the most expensive thing in the end, I had to buy it. No-one was willing to rent, everyone was too scared…

Fortunately I was able to buy supplies. Not food of course, food wouldn’t last. A harpoon, several knives, water filters, purification tablets, first aid kits… The real essentials.

I steer the boat carefully through the reef, conscious that this is my only means of transport if I ever want to leave this island again. White sand stretches in a bow ahead of me, gradually widening around me as I approach the shore.

Looking over the side, I see sand under the aqua green water, almost luminescent in the sunlight. A fish and then another and then a whole shoal of them swim underneath the hull.

Unless they succeed in poisoning the oceans I’ll be able to eat for a long time.

I run the boat up onto the shore, it’s flat bottomed so it doesn’t tip over. I pull up the engine and secure it, take a rope and tie the boat to a rock that serves as a useful anchor point.

My new home for the rest of my life.

The first few days I set myself busy building a shelter, getting used to the routine of fishing, trying to get used to the silence.

I’ve brought large plastic containers to store rain water. I cut down large leaves from the islands palm trees to put a roof over my shelter and try to arrange them so rain water will flow into the containers. I won’t know if it works until it finally rains.

One of my most precious supplies is a carefully sealed container of matches. Thousands of them. As long as I can keep them dry I’ll be able to boil water and cook the fish I catch.

Day 5

I sit on the white sand, looking out to the surf. It’s possible that others will come to this island, fleeing from the war and troubles that I’ve left behind. The world is ending and while I may have been one of the lucky ones, I hope there are more who got away.

Day 10

I’ve walked round the whole island now. Checking to see what resources are available. Mango trees and coconut will supplement my diet. I’m already starting to weary of my daily portion of fish.

Company is what I miss most. It’s been growing inside me each day.

I sit on the beach, the sand that hasn’t been trodden on for who knows how long.

The sand stretches out under the water for at least a hundred metres, maybe more, changing eventually to a dark blue, slightly darker than the sky in the distance. White clouds periodically block the sun, but here at the equator the temperature remains constant.

It is paradise and I have no-one to share it with.

All I can think about is what I’ve left behind, about what must be happening back home. So many have died and here I am living a dream vacation I might have killed for twenty years ago.

I never wanted to kill anyone.

But I knew if I stayed I would have to.

Day 14

I haven’t eaten all day.

I don’t even feel hunger, just lethargic. The motivation drained from me over the last few days. Yesterday all I did was sit on the beach waiting.

We were all to blame. Sure it would have been easy to blame the politcians, the leaders, but each of them represented us, each of them came from us. We got the governments we deserved and it seems we deserved to die.

At least no-one had pressed the button, at least before I left. Some semblance of rationality kept anyone from launching a pre-emptive strike, but who needs nuclear missiles when you can poison. When your conventional weapons are just as powerful as the smallest nuke, when you have a million men at your command all of whom seem to care nothing about their lives.

I left my family, I left my friends knowing that they would die.

Pleading with them to come with me, but none of them would.

It seemed like they were locked in to some strange feeling of destiny.

So I left. And every day I wonder what has happened to them. Is there anyone left?

Day 18

Today I forced myself to eat. Made myself sleep. I should be able to relax by now. I take long walks. I busy myself, building a stronger shelter, preparing for the long haul, but all I can think about is home.

I longed to come here, ever since I saw a poster of this view, heard about these islands, but I am not able to enjoy it.

Day 21

I don’t look back.

I doubt I will ever be able to return.

Maybe some lucky soul will find the shelter I left behind, the supplies buried under the floor, but for me, I realise that I was not destined to die alone.

The longer I was away, the greater my desire grew to do something, to try and stop the madness.

Maybe the world is ending, maybe all I can do is help it end faster, but I have to try.

I have to do something…

Copyright Mark Anderson Smith 2017 http://www.dragonlake.co.uk/ You may link to this post from http://www.dragonlake.co.uk/2017/06/flash-fiction-the-world-is-ending/ or share on a non-commercial website so long as the full copyright notice and this statement is included.

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