Superstition

   On November 1st, in a tiny village of Santiago, Secatepegez, about twenty miles from Guatemala, natives hold the annual festival of kites. Elaborate and giant kites fill the skies over this tiny village. The tradition started years ago when the townspeople were told by a magician that a secret way to get rid of evil spirits was by flying kites. He said the evil spirits were frightened by the noise of the wind against paper. Since then the kite festival has become an annual event.

   Amazingly, people often prefer to believe in superstition and lies rather than the truth. All through the Bible we read of people who believed acts of nature, serpents, and things were of divine authority.

   Paul confronted the people of Athens with the truth of a true God, instead of superstitions and lies when he proclaimed, "I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else... God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:22b-25, 27).

   Let's live as confident individuals in our faith of a true, loving, and powerful God