Today and Tomorrow

 We stand at a moment in history, a pinnacle from which we can look around us and see the rubble of our culture and look back over a long enough time to see how we came to this place. 

It is simple. We have arrived at this place both in America and the West by the determined rejection of God's design for life. We have broken his laws that were made to be a blessing and life, and we are reaping death. There is no better place to see this than in the present presidential race in America. In this race, one of the key issues has been abortion, a debate that has been defined by right to life or freedom of choice. 

The seeds of the debate took root deep in our past. They grew in the independence from God and his rules for life that characterized our nation and the world at the beginning of the 20th century and an independent spirit that was part of our make-up even earlier. We believed we had entered a brave new world, we were realizing the promise of our "Manifest Destiny"  with utopia within our grasp if ... if we could only shed our past and exert our independence from tradition and from God. Those were the weights that kept us from becoming all we could be. 

But we ran headlong into others who had similar dreams. And we fought a number of wars to determine whose dream would win. After nearly 200 years, it looked like our dream was winning. And then came along Russia and China. 

The nearer picture has not been much different. In our passion for independence we spawned the lost generation, the generation of the 1920s that pursued their own dream of independence from God and his rules for life. A few knew that it was pointless. They were the Existentialists, but their voice was lost in the excitement of the American dream of two cars in the garage and a chicken for every pot. 

Today we can look back and see the wreckage independence from God has caused. It is not pretty. It is writ in the homeless camps filling our city streets. It is writ in the violence and lawlessness, of school shootings and smash and grab burglaries. It is writ in politicians who desire power more than goodness. It is writ in broken families and drug addictions. It is writ in the almost 1 million unnecessary abortions each year. 

All of these stem from the root of a society of people who have chosen to do life their way and not God's way. It stems from fathers who have abandoned their responsibility to lead their families and mothers who have had to figure out life and raise children without that God-designed guidance. And it will not change until we return to families as God designed them. 

"Ask where the old, reliable paths are. Ask where the path is that leads to blessing and follow it. If you do, you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremaiah 6:16