BITS and PIECES
267th Edition – November 2, 2025
A random collection of news and views compiled by Frank McClelland for the Toronto Free Presbyterian Church.
REMEMBER OUR FRIENDS IN JAMAICA
The island of Jamaica was hit by the mammoth hurricane Melissa on Tuesday. We have had a mission and church in Little London on the west of the island since 1989. The eye of the hurricane passed over the town of Black River completely destroying it. Black River is only about twenty miles east of Little London.
With winds of over 180mph and as much as forty inches of rain, there was severe damage over much of the island. Telephone and internet contact was severely disrupted, so we were unable to reach the mission by phone until Friday.
Dr. Saunders finally contacted pastor Richard Craig on Friday. Thankfully, he reported that none of their people were hurt and the church building was largely untouched. However, Richard’s house was damaged, as was that of co-worker Randy Gunnings. One sad casualty of the hurricane was that the Guinep tree in front of the church, where Mrs. Nichols held the first Sunday school in 1989, was uprooted by the force of the storm. That tree was a sort of memorial of the work in Jamaica.
The Presbytery is setting up a relief fund for our friends in Jamaica to help them rebuild and do other repairs where necessary. Details of this fund will be made available shortly so that you can help our brothers and sisters in Christ whose need is great just now.
In the meantime, pray for them that the Lord will strengthen, sustain them and show them the way forward at this trying time.
MARTIN LUTHER’S STORM STORY
As a young man, Martin Luther studied law and was successful in his endeavours. After graduation, he decided to visit his family in Erfurt, a journey of ninety miles by horseback.
On July 2, 1505, near Stetterheim, he encountered a violent thunderstorm which terrified him. He thought God had unleashed His power to end his life.
What Luther did not know was that the Lord would use this event to change the direction of his life. When he got home, he held a party for his friends and told them that he was giving up law and was going to become a monk. They thought he was crazy.
But that decision, under the hand of a sovereign God, led him to his greatest work.
No doubt, others were impacted in some way by the same storm, but for Luther, it marked a change of direction. When we face some event like Luther, we should seek the Lord’s will like Paul, “What wilt Thou have me to do” [Acts 9:6]. And then do it. As the hymn says, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”
NO GOD, EH?
A young man of about twenty-five proudly told us that he had become an atheist. We were at a funeral, and he told us he had now rejected the faithful Gospel teaching he had received from his parents and at Sunday school. With his newly gained superior intellect, he could now proclaim with certainty his atheism and belief that there is no God.
We told him that to make a statement like that, he would need to have the attribute of omniscience. He wasn’t very big, and we asked him how, at his small stature, with a three-pound brain, he could tell us he searched the vastness of the Universe and declare positively that there is no God?
The earth itself is a mere speck of dust in the ocean of space, and we are infinitesimal specks on this earth. We are insignificant as grasshoppers[Isaiah 40:22].
Paul poses the questions, “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” [I Cor. 1:20].
We concluded our conversation with this proud young man by telling him that if what he said was true, then none of us had anything to worry about. If there is no God, we die like a dog and go into the nothingness of the grave.
But, young man, we reminded him, if we are right that God is, and He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him [Hebrews 11:6] then you have everything to fear.
“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” [Psalm 14:1]. Be very wise today and turn to the only living and true God.
