Shade Tree Wisdom 12/7/10

This is the day “That will live in infamy”. Those words were part of a speech then president Roosevelt made when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U S declared war on Japan. That was December 7, in 1941, and many of you weren’t even born yet. But there was a sense of “Can this be real?” feeling in the country. After all, we are America! We win wars. “How could they?”

But the deed was done, and it took real determined effort, concentration, and much sacrifice on the part of many before we finally concluded that war in 1945. But meanwhile the world changed, and many people who had been sent to every corner of the world changed too, their outlook, often their thinking, and their understanding of events.

What really gets tested in times of massive change like that is faith. No longer can we sit down with the friend we grew up with who lives around the corner to discuss some problem, for he is suddenly in Iowa Jima or North Africa. And events move faster than we are used to, it bewilders, and, as I said, it tests a faith. Does God know what is going on? Does the Word still work, and are the truths I learned in my childhood at home and at school still relevant to this time?

The changes reminded me of the change when Israel was hauled off to captivity. Disaster. They stewed in misery, and some false prophets encouraged that, till Jeremiah, God’s prophet, sent them a letter that told them to settle down, build houses, make it your home, for your Gad is there with you till you return home again.

And that is always the best way to survive a test, to depend on what you know. The Psalmist said this.

“But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord; I say,
'You are my God, my times are in your hands’.” Psalm 31,14.15.

The old truths, that have stood the test of time, that have carried many, many their life long. Such truths that have been comfort and strength in times of trouble and distress, these truths that cling to Jesus Christ, who teaches still, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father but by ME.”

So December the 7th passes by, always under God’s direction, and His blessing comes to us always.

GPD 12/7/10