Considering A New Approach

 Well, this post took more time than intended. July 4th was our last post. Then...nothing. 

There was a reason: the proverbial wall. It was hit on the birthday of our country. And it was some wall! Virtually impenetrable in fact. 

Why impenetrable? Simple. A ton of bricks fell from the sky right there. A few had been falling for quite sometime and I could pick my way through them. But finally a ton fell, creating a huge heap - a wall that put an end to a road well-traveled for well nigh 12 years or so. But like the infrastructure of our country, it had seen better days. So it turns out the wall of bricks was really a Godsend. A new approach was needed.

What the heck is going on here - road, bricks from the sky, wall? It's just a way to say that a respite was needed, a time to reassess. The posts weren't providing anything new, anything refreshing, any real contrast to the mass of confusion that's descended on us. And they didn't seem effective in countering the lies that, combined with the confusion, make so much of what we see and hear oppressive. 

Do you remember a time when there's been so much confusion, when lies so consistently hide the truth? If so, join the club, even if it's just two of us. 

My response to all this: Taking a deep breath? Yes. But then more silence, less talk; more prayer, more study. 

We simply can't afford to be drowned in confusion and lies anymore. And more gobs of information just won't help here. And what have recent posts added up to recently but another gob of information to add to the gobs already out there?

Forget it. No more.

So the choice becomes either no more posts or try a new approach. For now, the choice is the latter. 

All else remains the same. The C-Virus mess continues, now in what's called the "re-opening" stage, different from the "lock-down" stage to be sure, but still a mess. The economy lies in a sink hole created by the government-imposed mess. Social unrest, after its latest outburst, simmers now all around us, flaring up here and there, maybe ready to explode once again given the right spark. The haves and have-nots grow farther apart, giving violence an excuse. And, of course, the stock market skips and whistles through it all, as if the world were to soon be rosy once again (if it ever was rosy). 

With that as background, we begin our new approach quoting a thoughtful fellow:

"The days are dark, and hearts are heavy with forebodings as to what shall be the end of the questions and problems of our time. Labor and capital, wealth and poverty, stand over against each other with lowering faces; murder is in the air, and the spirits of evil are abroad almost visibly as it were. There are rumors of threatening disease and want, and the mind at times shrinks back affrighted from the days that seem coming on the earth. What does it all mean, and who shall bring the remedy to the evils of the age?"

If you suspected this is not a contemporary commentary, Bingo!, you hit the jackpot. It was written in the first decade of the 20th century. Things were somewhat as they now are. Studying that time period thus can shed some light on the conundrum, "Where do we go from here?" I have no answers at the moment. 

Answers may be wanting, but knowing we live in times that are by no means unique should first humble us, second take us out of ourselves (with a happy consequence of true humility). With that, a nod to those who study "cycles." One such cycle here: every 60 years or so, serious, even violent social unrest erupts. That last one - 60 years ago - was the 1960s. Anyone remember those days? The above quoted text was written in the 60 years before that, the decade that began the 20th century.

We live in a world that runs in cycles. Each of us plays his part as a small, almost infinitesimal dot within some cycle or other. Our time begins and ends, anywhere from a few minutes of life to 100 years or more. Where are you now? Take stock, locate yourself here and now, and get on with your life. The problems we face have been faced before. Ditto for the happy times: They've come and gone over and over again, since God first breathed a soul into the first man and woman. 

Do you sense a ray of hope in the midst of our current messy and sometimes worrisome times? Good. But only if that hope rests in God. Hope in mankind inevitably disappoints.

What of the hope of modern technology, medicine? What of the hope of science purported to have taken us from the dark age of superstition to one of reason and enlightenment? What of the hope of social "progress" touted to end the tyranny of patriarchy, "systemic" racism, Western Imperialism, gender and sexual bias - and all the other ills the social sciences categorize with their not-so-scientific intellectual disciplines? 

Hope in these if you wish. My hope is in the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.

And we we begin.