Monday, September 12, 2011

Things are as bad as they seem . . .


The economy continues to reel.  Cause and effect and effect and cause are continuously debated while behind the statistics and the arguments, real people search for real work and real meaning.

The earth seems to make war upon itself as disaster upon disaster are heaped one upon the other, with no relief in sight.

Things really are as bad as they seem.

Thus it has ever been; and thus, I suspect, it will ever be.

Things are as bad as they seem.  And I wonder why we are surprised.  We spend so much time preparing for the rainy day, never seeming to grasp that the very nature of the rainy day is its unexpectedness.  We prepare for floods and get droughts . . . stock up on food only to find that it’s water we need . . . set aside money only to have the value of the money turn to ash.

Things are as bad as they seem.  But so what?

It’s not Pollyanna speaking to say that acknowledging reality is not the same as being held captive to it.

We in the United States seem to be spoiling for a fight with we know not who for reasons we know not why.  I’m thinking it’s because we the people somehow believe that we were promised something we cannot recognize by someone we cannot name.  We name that something ‘happiness’ and God protect the one who would get in our way of its pursuit.

We so proudly proclaim that we are a ‘God-fearing nation’, as if that were a good thing.  Maybe, just maybe, we would do better to be God-relying, God-trusting, God-embracing.  For surely what we need is more trust in the source of our true security.  More trust and less fear, even, and perhaps especially, of God.

After all, Fear not! wasn’t a suggestion.

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