My mother”s family at the time of the Great Depression
– but the Kingdom
will not come that way
My mind has occasional bizarre flashes of thought. My family would say they are more than just occasional. I thought the other day, that if I had lived backwards in history, in other words, if after having been born in 1950 I lived my life in reverse, I would be in 1887 now. I would have met my great grandparents, lived through two world wars and a great depression, gone through the period when penicillin was invented and the days before cars and planes, back to a day when many children died before they got to five years of age.
On reflection, I am happy that I went forward in history. I had an opportunity for a good education, good medical care, I providentially missed the draft to go to Vietnam, I haven’t been involved in any world wars, and the Global Financial Crisis, awful as it is, still pales before the Great Depression.
How thankful am I? Are we? Do we expect things and take life for granted? I must confess that I often do. It takes my little flights of crazy fancy to be reminded that we live, particularly in Western countries, in a very blessed time in, so many ways.
Probably the key area where we miss out today is the level of Biblical faith in our society. It is, on the whole, not a time of revival no matter how much we sing about it. How cool it would have been to have listened to Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards (there I go again -but that is more than a reversed lifetime away!) well at least Spurgeon. So as good as life is, there is that foundational area of faith where it could be much, much better.
As a chronic nostalgic I have to be reminded, and maybe we all need to be reminded, that I/we have a place and purpose in the present. This is where God wants me to be to serve Him and His Kingdom – even (or especially, because) the level of Christian spirituality in the West is in decline. The Kingdom is still growing and still coming even if we in the West have ridiculed and devalued the idea.
It is fun to let your mind wander but it is even more exciting to prepare for the King!
Travels from Ur 