The Here and Now

Is it just me, or does the world look like it’s about to blow up?

Look, I’m a life-long believer in the old adage, this too shall pass, but it’s getting harder and harder to rely on adages. Another of my go to truths has always been, things are never as bad as they seem, but even that one has taken a beating lately. Every morning, my inspection of the overnight news sends me to the medicine box for a couple of Rolaids.

This morning, for example. I learn that a freak storm dumped two feet of hail somewhere in MEXICO. Flash floods wiped out scores of homes in the deserts of Arizona. A snowstorm was forecast for Scotland…in August. ISIS published a video of the beheading of an American photo-journalist with more to come. The rioting, looting and grandstanding continue unabated in Ferguson. With the ink on the latest cease fire barely dry, a barrage of rockets hit Tel Aviv overnight from Gaza. The Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to double in size every three days. The Chinese army has crossed into India several times over the last few days for reasons unknown. The Cubs have won three games in a row. After a brief 36 hour trip to the office, the President is safely back at Martha’s Vineyard and his vacation.

Whenever the news gets like this, I think about the “wars and rumors of wars,” and the “groaning of nature” lines from the Bible, staples of end times prophesy. But then I remember what a fever swamp of nitwittery the whole “end times industry” is and I relax. Still, our world seems out of control most of the time, and resistant to easy cures or any cure, easy or not. No political movement has any workable solutions. Religions are everywhere in disrepute, even my Christianity seems bent on irrelevancy, more interested in slugging it out with each other over arcane theological disputes than bringing the love of Christ to the world.

So, I suppose it’s left to each of us to do the best we can in the here and now. I can’t fix Ferguson, but I can try to make someone’s day in Short Pump. I can’t bring peace to the Middle East but I can do a better job of loving my neighbor here in America.

I can’t do everything, but I can do something. The here and now is all I’ve got at the moment. I need to make the most of it.