Crazy Times

The price of gas is falling through the floor, the federal government is giving away our tax dollars like candy, small business owners are scared that the new administration is going to start over-taxing anyone that makes enough money to hire anyone else and the guy that ran his campaign on ‘bringing the kind of change America needs’ has yet to indicate in any way what the heck he is talking about.  Lots of people who think like I do are looking around wondering if everyone has lost their minds.  We voted for this.  We asked for this.  We turned our heads while the pillar companies of our economy started making horrible decisions.  Yea…we must have gone crazy.

A few things come to my mind at this point.

1. As my generation starts to emerge as leaders and business owners and as priority-one consumers for companies to target we need to take a lesson from our grandparents.  They didn’t expect anyone to do anything for them.  They worked hard for very little.  They didn’t have jobs with vacation and sick time, they didn’t have family leave or cushy work environments.  They worked long hours sometimes in hazardous environments, they were entitled to nothing but the right to decide how to live their own lives.  They made sacrifices for the sake of their posterity with little concern for what they might gain themselves.  Many of them fought and died to protect this lifestyle that many of us would whine about daily.  I think that my generation needs to sac-up and chose the HARD thing for the good of our posterity. We have been sheltered by our parent’s generation and perhaps we have been done a disservice.  Perhaps pain needs to be something we show to our children for their survival.  More importantly that the pain is a part of life that is as necessary as the seasons and that putting it off is unhealthy.

2. During times like these we get really focused on our world arena and we watch CNN or MSNBC and we see a globe in crisis.  I think that one of the best things we can do in these times is to invest in our families and our neighbors.  Discover who we are as a community, decentralize and localize our resources.  Be determined to be self reliant and to be concerned for our neighbors. Learn to garden and find out what grows best in your yard.  Get good and taking care of yourself.  If it gets really ugly, its your immediate community and your skills that you are going to depend on the most.

3. Finally a good healthy perspective on what we are putting our trust in.  Are we trusting in a government run by and established by people?  Or are we trusting in the constant and reliable hand of God to provide for us? This isn’t just a question for those of strong or mature faith.  This is a question for anyone that cannot escape the fact that creation testifies to the existence and presence of a God that lives and is concerned about us daily.  We cannot expend tons of energy worrying about things we can’t control.  We need to trust that the world is unfolding in a way that does not surprise this God that we can trust in.

It might be kind of preachy, and its not complete, but its a sleepy summary on my thoughts on current events.