When All Seems Lost

"Seems" is the keyword

There seemed to be a little hope for a while. A minute, maybe. But now the news is filled with horrors, as ever. Mass shootings, wars, rumors of wars. Overdoses and robberies.

Plagues and pestilences, real and conjured.

The guilty are praised and the innocent/justified are excoriated, or “cancelled,” as the kids say..

Blatantly totalitarian governments just over the border ... and here in our midst.

Fear abounding.

If I go on, you’ll think that this is yet another lament as to the fragility of freedom in our country. But it's not even a lament about the dearth of freedom in the rest of the world.

This is about the ugliness of the human heart. Yes, mine as well.

And when that ugliness goes unchecked, it becomes corporate. It blooms; from individual, to family, to tribe, to nation. And If you read any type of history, it’s the norm, not the exception.

And it’s fertile. It has babies and lasts through decades, generations, centuries and, more often than not, millennia – if there is nothing to cause it to come to a halt, do an about-face, and begin the trek in the exact opposite direction.

I think that the about-face is what happened when America was founded. In fits and starts, America turned human history around and morphed into a place where people could live in a little bit of peace, based on the notion that people had a God-given right to do so. Certainly not all Americans could count on that type of peace, but quite a few could and, even when injustice and oppression continued to exist, America showed herself capable of turning around and marching in the other direction. Repenting.

I think we are still capable of that, but someone needs to say it, so I will. We need to be in prayer for our country, in the name of Jesus the Christ.

Turn around and don't look back. Do it even if God hasn't heard from you in a while ... or ever.

And know that the individual 'you' and the corporate 'you' will have to do it again. And again.

The more you do it, the easier it gets.