My town's Sunday morning newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, practices the dictum "all news is local." This morning's front page has two articles. The lead is headlined, "Heavy Kids Getting Grown-Up Diseases". It focuses on what is called an "epidemic" of obesity among American adolescents leading to high blood pressure, clogged arteries and Type II diabetes, something that used to be rare in kids. The special report is called "Indiana's Epidemic."

The second article on the page is about our new multi-million dollar football stadium due for completion in 2008 and Indy's chances at landing a Super Bowl sometime in the next decade. The town fathers are going to "put on a full court press." That's a basketball term but I guess it works in football too. This article works today since it is Super Bowl Sunday.

It is not till you turn to page 3, 4, and 5 that you get an inkling there are bigger issues going on in the world. Here you find headlines like these:

Syrians Torch Embassies in Protest of Caricatures.  This is an article about Muslim reaction to the cartoon caricatures of Mohammad  printed in Danish and other European newspapers.

Sunnis Warn of Civil War. An article about impending civil war between rivals factions in Iraq.

U.N. Unit to Report Iran. The 35-nation board of the U.N. atomic energy agency voted Saturday to report Iran to the Security Council. For Great Britain, Germany and France this is a statement that their negotiated efforts to deal with Iran on this issue has failed.

My point is this. The way the world is lining up the question about a Super Bowl in Indianapolis may be a moot point in few years. It is an increasingly scary situation that is developing in front of our globally wired  eyes. The Muslim wrath against all things Western is incrementally building to point where someone will have to take some serious action to hold off this growing menace in the world.

I doubt the U.N. will be the one to do it. Look for China, Russia and India to be the ones to rise to the occasion and reign in the Iranian Mullahs. If, and when, that happens we will see a new power bloc that can change the geopolitical scene as we know it. Together these nations represent more than half the world's current population. They cannot, and will not, be ignored.

But many Americans are not really noticing the problems noted in the headlines above. Popular culture commands a lot of attention and sports drive a big piece of the entertainment scene. Instead of being a pleasant diversion on life's road too much of popular culture consumes too much time and too many lives. In time we are in danger of being caught in a snare of events from which there is no escape. We are not heeding the signs of our times in the spirit of  Christ's warning in Luke 12:54-56.

I appreciate the need to take care of things close to home. It is very tempting to close ourselves off from the big issues developing in our world. But Bible prophecy tells us that these issues are going to land on our door step and change our lives in dramatic fashion. Life will not always be as it is. The sooner we awaken to that fact and moderate our life accordingly the better we will be able to navigate that time.

There are many days I turn first to the sports page to see what happened with my favorite teams. But before I put the paper down I always read the latest on the major world issues of the day. It is just that all too often I have to turn to inside pages to find that news.