New year; old life

The new year has finally come.  I was not quite finished with the old one, but non-the-less I find myself planted in 2021.  Of course, it’s nice to be “planted” as opposed to being interred.  Still, there is a nasty organic residue of 2020 clinging to my bones, and probably yours. 

I am glad to be alive and feel privileged to live in the United States of America.  My life is rich with joy and contentment.  However, as a citizen of this nation, I agonize over the story we are writing for future generations to read.  The good thing about my agonizing is that it causes me to evaluate the values I have held so comfortably thus far in life. 

Looking back over the last 12 months, two firebrands have scared my heart; “Black lives matter” and “Stop the steal.”  They both grieve me, and I ask myself, “Did black lives ever not matter to me?” I also ask, “Is there anything in me that can be interpreted as being ok with uprising just because an election did not go my way?”  (On a much smaller but more disastrous level, this can happen in the fellowship of a church body when a “majority” gets their way.)

I want to say what we have witnessed, and our response to it is universal.  But I don’t know about much of the universe, so I need to limit myself to what I know. There needs to be a new word, “globiversal.”  Yes, I could use “globally,” but “globiversal” is better, in my opinion.

Review history to determine when all this started.  Today’s mess began with a curse, not just any curse, THE Curse as described in Genesis 3:17.   I can do nothing about your participation in the Curse or relieve your suffering.  But I can do something about my part in it; choose to reconnect with my Creator and to comply with His design for life.

I have been reminded of two timely quotes and a word or two of background. Laurel said to Hardy, “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”  This quote needs to be directed to Satan first.  Then repeated to anyone who lives from “the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Andy Taylor and Barney Fife said to each other in several episodes, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”  This line actually came from the early nineteenth-century Scottish author Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field.  It was right then, and it is true today.  Most of us are deceiving ourselves that our conclusions are God’s conclusions.  Or, if you don’t believe God exists, then you might say, “My beliefs are right. If yours are different, they are wrong, and you are stupid”.

Finally, consider this quote;

Micha 6:8

Mankind, he has told each of you what is good

and what it is the Lord requires of you:

to act justly,

to love faithfulness,

and to walk humbly with your God. (CSV)