A Word of Encouragement

Each morning I begin the day by reading scripture and then looking over the news feed. That way I have an idea of what each side is up to.  My scripture reading of late has been Isaiah and Ezekiel for the Old Testament and Romans from the New Testament.  On more than a few mornings it seems that the scripture readings and the news feed are describing the same reality from different perspectives.   As I look at what is happening in our world today, especially in the western church, it seems eerily similar to what was happening in Israel and Judah before, at the time of, and during the Babylonian captivity. 

It is a time in which it is easy to become discouraged.  It is a time in which we can see parallels between the ancient people of Israel and our churches.  We may want to look at the world through rose-colored stain glass windows, but those windows will not change the reality.  The Pollyannaism of a ‘don’t worry, be happy’ mind set will do little to solve our world’s problems.  The denial of fallen human nature that often permeates left-leaning thinking, as well as, the ‘can-do entrepreneurial’ spirituality which drives more than a few contemporary churches, cannot deal with the greatest challenges we face.   It is easy to be discouraged.

But I came across a quote from the great British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge that I found especially encouraging.  Muggeridge witnessed more than a little of the evil in this world.  He summed up his perspective in this quote for the latter part of the 20^th century.  Some of the references may seem dated to us, but for the person who lived though these moments they represented true disillusionment and despair.  This is a quote worth reading, indeed memorizing, for anyone who lives in discouraging moments.   It is a quote I use as often as I can. 

Malcolm Muggeridge said:

We look back upon history and what do we see?  Empires rising and falling; revolutions and counter-revolutions. Wealth accumulated and wealth dispersed.  Shakespeare has spoken of the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon. 

I look back upon my own fellow countrymen, once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world.  Most of them convinced in the words of what is still a popular song that ‘the God who made them mighty shall make them mightier yet’.  I heard a crazed cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years.  I have seen an Italian clown saying that he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power.  I met a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin, acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more humane that Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than a Shoka.  I have seen America wealthier and in terms of military weaponry more powerful than the rest of the world put together.  So, that had the American people so desired, they could have out done a Caesar or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquest.

All in one lifetime, all gone, gone with the wind.

England, part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.  Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy.  Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades.  America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keeps her motorways roaring, the smog settling.  With troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixote of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate. 

All in one lifetime!  All in one lifetime, gone.

Behind the debris of these self-styled solemn super men and imperial diplomatists stands the gigantic figure of one person because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom, mankind might still have hope.  The person of Jesus Christ.

In the midst of all the bad news, we have hope; we have Jesus Christ.