For you who live on shifting sands

“But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will run back and forth, and knowledge will increase” (Daniel 12:4).

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (“The Advocate,” Wednesday, August 28, 2013) has a word concerning the rapid pace of change in our generation.

Cohen cites Moises Naim’s new book “The End of Power,” that many companies which once ruled the economic world–Kodak and Blackberry among others–are now gone or on life support. Congress seems in a state of eternal gridlock and little gets done. Presidents issue directives and hold press conferences and address Congress and nothing happens.  Political parties seem ineffective in holding their mavericks in line.  CEOs take the reins of huge companies and then are fired a couple of years later because they were unable to turn the company around.

At every level, Naim says, people are lamenting an inability to get things done.

And why is this?  What’s happening?

Cohen writes, “For one, there is just more of everything–people, for sure, but also weapons and nations and billionaires and blogs and even chess masters–88 in 1972, more than 1,200 today.  Mentalities have changed. Women all over the world are walking away from abusive marriages, and people are more mobile. ‘Barriers to power have weakened,’ Naim writes. The world is awash in democracies.”

True. Everything not nailed down is coming loose. Everything is changing.

Newspapers are shutting down. The three television networks which we watched in my childhood have splintered into hundreds of channels, each with a tiny slice of the viewers.

A few years ago, a preacher would go up and down streets knocking on doors in search of anyone interested in starting a new church in that neighborhood. A year later, they’re meeting in a garage with two dozen people.  These days, a preacher with spiked hair and a soul patch starts a church in a school auditorium and two years later, he’s preaching to a thousand people or more. Within five years, that church has locations all over the metro area with most worshipers watching the pastor on huge screens without a clue whether he’s in their building today or not.

The times they are a-changing.

If you’re not feeling out of step with current events, it may be you don’t know what’s happening.

No wonder many oldsters want to run and hide in their dreams and fantasies of 1955, a period wrongly treasured for its stability and predictability. (Anyone remember the Cold War?)

In November of 1942, when the Second World War was still going badly, Prime Minister Winston Churchill told Britishers, “Here we are, and here we stand, a veritable rock of stability in this drifting world.”

He had the right idea, but he was wrong about Great Britain being that unmoving and unmoveable rock of stability.  Like most of the other nations of the so-called free world, Churchill’s beloved country has continued its weirdward drift.

We do need a rock. He was right on that count.  We need a place to stand.

For good reason, Holy Scripture gives us words like these….

“The Rock! His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice; righteous and upright is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4).

“Indeed, there is no one besides Thee, nor is there any rock like our God” (I Samuel 2:2).

“The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock; and exalted be God, the rock of my salvation!” (II Samuel 22:47)

“He only is my Rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be shaken” (Psalm 62:6).

“The Lord has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge” (Psalm 94:22).

Got time for two more?

“For I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:6).

“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Anyone wishing to live in a stable world where nothing ever changes should find another planet. Those wishing to retreat to the 1950s may enjoy reading Ray Bradbury, but should skip the morning paper.

A friend wrote a letter in our denominational weekly recently protesting how the word “gay” now stands for “homosexual.”  He wrote a nice, reasonable defense for keeping words as they are. But he may as well be trying to hold back tomorrow’s sunrise.

The one constant today is change.

If my hope is in the United States of America, as much as I treasure this country, I’m in trouble.  If my hope is in my retirement income from Guidestone, the denominational agency entrusted with a few zillion of our dollars, I’m in trouble.  If my hope is in anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ and His eternal Word, then I am betting on a fool’s scam.

When Archimedes was demonstrating the lever’s capabilities, someone asked how big an item he could move with this tool.  He answered, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.”

“For me, to live in Christ” (Philippians 1:21).

All other ground is sinking sand.

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