Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17
No matter how dear your friends are, they can fail. No matter how much money you have, you can go broke. No matter how diligently you exercise, you can get sick. Even your most trusted walking stick can break. Your dearest dream can die. Life is as uncertain as the clouds that gather and scatter, and as fickle as the waves on a beach.
That being said, we oldsters today are experiencing losses that are not easy for us to verbalize among our peers and especially, our genetic down-line. We, who were birthed during the 30-40 year period from just prior WWII until our nation’s 200th birthday, largely experienced the cultural dimensions of hope and prosperity as communicated to us by our parents, family, close-knit communities and the relevant stable institutions, etc., providing us in the USA, at least on the surface, a mostly invigorating world view, even though we usually knew much of the world’s populations were struggling for adequate water, sustenance, shelter, and especially, physical and emotional health and its subsequent well being.
Fact is today, the hopelessness formerly experienced in either third world or strife or war-torn countries during our first 30-40 years of life has now come home to roost in Europe and North America, and more than a few of us are increasingly, viewing our current culture and living conditions at their best, kindly spoken, simply as “senseless!” The evidence is now in plain sight even with the switch & bait games, with such as the Covid fiasco & lock-down (who knows, perhaps to be repeated again by the Moderna bird flu jab and it’s subsequent lock-down), the Ukraine War, Trump trial, Israel Gaza conflict, the disintegration of our inner-connected global economies, fragmented dysfunctional homes & families, evil now called good & good now called evil, rampant impairing addictions cutting across all segments of populations, etc., etc.
And we of the group birthed in that 30-40 year window, are now being smartingly irritated from this descending & prevailing cloud of senselessness. So, often we simply choose not to meaningfully communicate with those born since the eighties including now too often even those labeled progressive oldsters because the conversations between all of these media purposely polarized generations just doesn’t seem to go so well, or for sure, not end well.
And so, we oldsters too often simply withdraw, at the very moment in our personal history of destiny, that we are most needed to be lovingly engaged with the younger crowd, to come alongside them while they are being pawned or hawked by media outlets, so as to draw out their questions, concerns, frustrations, conclusions, as well as their dreams, goals and aspirations during these darker senseless days that are oppressing them relentlessly without evidential access to His hope from us, virtually to their fatal demise, that being, of course, the bottom line for Satan and his crew. Seriously, think this through!
Some of you may well recall your emotional darkness during the Berlin wall going up, the Cuban missile crisis, the three assassinations (Kennedy’s & King, Vietnam atrocities, Cambodian bombings, etc. And, as traumatic as these events were for us, I now consider everything we experienced in our first forty years of life as rather trivial and insignificant compared to the cultural, moral, emotional, spiritual and physical nuclear blasts figuratively speaking being unleashed on the younger generations today. And to think we oldsters are off busying ourselves elsewhere thereby avoiding our responsibilities rather than even directly refusing to engage with them (ignorance is bliss?) during these horrific world and cultural events for whatever be our excuses; shame on us!
For example, just observe how pervasive the mothering instincts is in nature with its young; thus serving or confirming the biological basis for that truth. Fact is physically and emotionally, our infants and children, even youth, are the most vulnerable of all God’s creation while in their preparation to achieve their life’s destinies; and are we content to just sit back and watch them struggle without the benefit of our experience, hopefully wisdom, and His love, within a Cultivating Anchored Community?
Isn’t it sad for us with such a rich spiritual heritage that we are actually allowing ourselves to be held hostage now in this senseless world since we are literally ignoring our changeless God? Especially so, when we actually do have a God with whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. He doesn’t have shifting moods, bad days, “oops” moments, momentary breakdowns, or changes of mind or heart. He’s as consistent as a plumb line, as steady as a rock, and as unchanging as eternity. He is as He has always been and always will be. Forever He is enthroned in the highest, and forever His Word is fixed in the heavens.
BOTTOM LINE: Even though our culture’s actions, sights, sounds & smells may at times overwhelm us, take strength in the fact our forefathers chose to walk with God the best they could, and so can we, and most assuredly, so can our children. God’s provisions for us are the same in every generation. His promises cannot fail, His presence cannot dim, His power cannot wane. We can trust Him completely.
“False christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But take heed; see, I have told you all things beforehand.” Mark 13:22-23.
It is not wise to be overly confident dogmatic as we try to interpret current events. The twists and turns of history are under God’s providential control, and it’s best to watch prayerfully so we can take advantage of open doors for evangelism while awaiting our Lord’s return. We must live every day with confidence and excitement that no matter how dark or senseless the news reports, our sovereign Lord is in control.
This quickie admonition I tweaked from David Jeremiah’s Discovery April 21 several paragraphs is much too long, but you are well aware by now, if I’m inspired, brevity is not one of my virtues. And adding insult to injury, I’d be remiss if I’d not share yet, for those of you with more time and interest, the nugget I found in today’s, June 6, dailylightdevotional.org in it’s Evening’s 8th innocuous verse from Ephesians 2:14, “He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” Since that was unclear to me, I read it in the Message and that really opened up the gates! So simple, so plain! And yes, FYI, I am aware today’s theme of we oldster’s stepping up to the plate that was was also hit on earlier in the conclusion of the Eat Move Sleep Finale post. Perhaps there is a reason. Be aware though, my scribblings are written first to me.
In fact, I suggest at some point you all read the whole chapter to get a vision for God’s big picture. Such will serve you well considering the senselessness all about us! Here it is from The Message Version, for your ready comprehension. The scholarly translations have their place BUT hopefully not to complicate Truth for the masses. I include the verses here because too many readers are yet without a copy. Most thrift stores in our area have copies for cheap. Better, keep a supply yourself to give away when appropriate.
NEXT UP: Since this turned out to be something of a weekend edition, the next post will be short & sweet.
Ephesians 2:1-22 (MSG)
- It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.
2. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.
3. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.
4. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love,
5. he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!
6. Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.
8. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish!
9. We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing!
10. No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11. But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways
12. had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large.
13. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14. The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance.
15. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16. Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility.
17. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders.
18. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building.
20. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone
21. that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God,
22. all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
