Yesterday was this country's National Day of Prayer. Last night, I attended a prayer gathering put on by multiple churches and hosted by a church I'd never been to. As the night went on, I noticed a theme evolve in my mind and heart: God's plan is for those of us who claim to love and follow Him to be the lights in the darkness, and we pretty much have been sucking at that. I feel like God, starting in 2020, has served up on a silver platter a huge opportunity to shine, and we have done the opposite. We have behaved far more like our surrounding culture than the God we follow (attacks when we should have listened, silence when we should have spoken, choosing sides based on earthly ideals, etc.). As some know, my journey with my church has been a long, strange trip indeed. And indeed, it has finally come to an end.
But everything is bigger than that. WAY bigger, in fact, than which church I or anyone else goes to! Jesus prayed for His followers to be unified, and we've pretty much screwed that up royally as well. And the more I watch the world and think and pray about what I see, the more convinced I am becoming that at this point, the real hope on the human side of things lies in certain generational things just going away.
NOTE: Not all, just some. No baby-with-the-bathwater silliness. We actually need all generations to work together to thrive. Sadly, though, some things just need to go.
For one example, as we approach the season where we get to "choose" between a megalomaniac and an apparent genocide supporter, people like this young woman give me even just a little hope; not for the immediate future unfortunately, but for the longer term. I've even had the thought recently that, I wonder if the Doomsday Clock actually measures the increasing number of people who are figuring out how things really work between the have's and have-not's -- and why -- and, subsequently, how much closer we're getting to the breaking point of when enough people have finally had enough. (I'm sure it's not, but the thought really isn't that outlandish, and that's a problem in itself.)
Anyway, at the end of the day, human beings are divided into two fundamental groups: those who are, and those who are not, stupid. It seems our only real hope is that the latter group, like the young woman above, begins and continues to outnumber the former. And as "First World" Christians especially, it seems our part in this is to focus on the author and perfecter of not-stupid and let go of our culturally ingrained nonsense.
And that is something I consider worth praying for, yesterday, today, and every day!
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