Fear for the Future

I don’t know what my life will hold. I am nothing. I look back to the past, especially the hippie era, and I am shocked and awed. I am shocked at how crazy and brave people were then. There was madness in this country. It is unbelievable how insane things were. They attacked people, they discriminated, they warred against each other. All of the characteristics I believe are true about this country weren’t then. Bigotry, desire for equality, judgment, empathy, hypocrisy, revolutionary ideals, rebellion, proactive movements, lunacy and hope were all present. It was such a fight between what had been and what everyone thought should be. I’ve never seen a nation so united and divided all at the same time. Except maybe now.

It makes me so sorrowful to see the injustice and the brutality that have been. I weep at all of the deaths of the revolutionary leaders and the mild-mannered protesters that were just standing up for what they believed in. I thought that was what America was made for, fighting for what's just and free speech and all that. Maybe I am just misunderstanding people’s intentions. I wasn’t alive then. Even if I was, I still might not have grasped the vastness of people intentions for their actions.

No matter the reasons, it is still death and assignation and murder. And what does it matter that it makes me fill with tears and desire to stand up for what is right? I still sit here and only write about it to make myself feel better. How do we justify our lives as Christians just living and doing our own thing, starting our own families and trying not to step on anyone's toes? I realize that some of us WILL live normal lives. And in Ecclesiastes 2:24, it speaks of how living our lives and working are our joy as humans. Maybe that’s the answer. We’re "just" humans. We’re too simple-minded. That probably answers, partly, the questions as to how people can be so profoundly out of control. But I like to think there can be more to us. After all we are God's creation. God can be in us (if we accept Him) and direct us down a journey that can radically change lives, more than any protest or demonstration. He is the one who brought us through the times of turmoil (mostly known as the 60s.) I really think that the 60s looked like the end of the world. I am in awe that God had so much mercy on us that He let us live long enough for me to be born, and live in a good home, and be surrounded by people who love me, and get married to the love of my life, and to sit here and write this.

If the 60s weren’t the end of the world, I fear what I will see in the future.