August 29: The oppression of the world / Our children in His hands

Job 31:1-33:33

2 Corinthians 3:1-18

Psalm 43:1-5

Proverbs 22:8-9

"Vindicate me, my God

   and plead my cause 

   against an unfaithful nation."

Do you have children, and are you as worried for them and their future as I am for mine?  Because as silly as my Frank Sinatra/Cole Porter-listening-parents seemed to think my world was when I was my kids' age (see: Madness / Our House and anything Madonna was wearing at any point in her career) all that seems to pale in comparison with the ludicrousness the world demands we and our children accept as truth today, so much of it diametrically opposed to what we'd come to know and to believe.  

And, to make matters worse, the world today seems less and less willing to accommodate views that differ from the commonly held and widely trumpeted.  It used to be we could disagree, and agree to disagree - today, the world increasingly demands we embrace what we disagree with, that which we oppose (see: Christian bakers and wedding cakes, Little Sisters of the Poor, "settled science" climate change and gender fluid bathrooms).  Who wouldn't be disheartened for our children's future by the sight of a journalism professor refusing the press access to a public protest, or by university officials who charge $65,000 a year for an education, acquiescing to the misguided demands of group of students who, by their assertions, reject the very idea of learning they are in college to achieve? 

So little of it makes sense, so much of it madness we are being ordered not only to accept, but to live by, and live with.  I guess this gives me some idea of what Job must have been thinking.  He didn't understand why God was putting him through such suffering; what he knew was that he'd been faithful to God, and was going to remain so - regardless of what his friends insisted.  

"Why, my soul, are you downcast?

     Why so disturbed within me?

 Put your hope in God,

     for I will yet praise Him,

     my Savior and my God."

The good news is that, as we knew Job eventually found out, there was a purpose to it all - God's purpose, far above ours, and whatever the worry, the fear, the anguish and the despair he might have felt, that we (that I!) might feel for our children and the world they will grow up in, GOD HAS THIS COVERED.  I pray then not that my children be under His care - they already are, He loves them far more than their mother and I could, combined; but that I might live by the psalmist's words, reject the worry and the fear, and put my hope in Him.