June 1: The Nations Rage

The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. Ps. 46:6

Injustice. Anger. Unrest. Collateral damage. What a terrible series of events just as we were beginning to reopen from the lock-down.

I suppose if you had a time machine you could go back six months and it would seem like taking a vacation in a strange wonderland where there just weren’t a lot of pressing problems. Record employment levels and wage growth, no wars going on (foreign or domestic), no pandemic or rules about distancing. People came to church and stood around chatting over coffee and donuts afterwards. The news talked endlessly about who had lied to whom about whose dealing with Russia, because, hey, you have to talk about something to keep a 24 hour news cycle going.

On one hand, fantasizing about such a trip in a time machine should make us realize how blind we typically are to the good things in life. We didn’t think of it as a wonderland six months ago, and probably weren’t as grateful then as we would be now to experience it. But on the other hand, having such a time machine would make us realize that today isn’t all that unusual.

Suppose you went back to 1919. Mangled WWI veterans were everywhere, and demanding benefits the government had promised them but not delivered on. The Spanish Flu, a pandemic far worse than Covid was ravaging the country and the world. Race riots that dwarf anything we’ve seen this year rocked New York City and many other urban centers. Organized crime was gearing up to make hay of the impending Prohibition, which was being finalized to go into effect the next year.   

Or fast forward to, say, 1933. Persistent, inexplicable, record high temperatures were rendering much of the country into the Dust Bowl. Fascists and Communists were fighting for control of Europe. Domestically, migrations of people looking for work caused constant social strife. The economy was in tatters and unemployment was at record high levels. Groups of people all over the country were reduced to living in tent cities outside of towns.
1942? 1968? We sometimes forget how frightening such times may have been to live through because we see how they worked out. The point is not to downplay the problems we face today, but to look to the one constant—the raging of the nations, and the fact that God is with us still.

If we took our time machine forward instead of back, we might find ourselves in a strange wonderland in terms of technology but in a dystopian wasteland in some other ways, and it might make us think of today as an unappreciated gem of a day. Who knows? But it is a safe bet that the nations will be raging and the God of Jacob will be our fortress. Thankfully, we don’t have a time machine. Thus, we get to take one day at a time, experiencing the passing good things with gratitude and the particular challenges without fear. 

In Christ,
Pastor Speckhard