Friday.....America.....Pilgrim's Progress

 I don't like getting out of bed but by the time I start the car I'm ready to start the day. I sit down to a McDonald's Big Breakfast and an orange juice and read the Pittsburgh Tribune and New York Times before seven o'clock comes. Here is where the incongruence comes in. How can I so easily go through the day, planting trees so to speak, when our society has already collapsed. The violent acts reported in the newspapers have simply become filler for they are so prevalent. Life has become meaningless in our culture. I was raised in a broken home as they call it today. I know what it is like to have your father hundreds of miles away. It happens, but it is epidemic today. The economic situation will make it hard for many and the very future of America is in jeopardy. We have become a Facebook culture driven by narcissism. Our universities have become playgrounds and churches are still meeting places only we come to meet each other now rather than to meet with each other in the reverence of worship. Technology is becoming a god as we base our happiness on it's fulfillments. Race relations have been shaken as many saw hope turn into disaster. Ethics is passe and honor is an archaic term. A lot of people want to see drugs legalized and free speech monitored. Terror has become a weapon of mass destruction. I have written over 600 blogs on issues like this but I am also desensitized. My heart sinks as I read and watch the news and I'm overcome...momentarily overcome as I'm soon drawn into the trivialities of the day, only to lay on my bed at night and ponder my hypocrisies. In between, the dinnertime prayer from Valley Of Vision settles me for as the book's title prayer proclaims  Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see in the heights; hemmed in my mountains of sin I behold thy glory. And yet I depart again only to have the peace return when I meditate in bed on Christ and the assurance of His control over every square foot of this earth and the cosmos that surrounds it. The anomaly is that heavyheartedness is necessary for it leads one to Christ for He is the only answer to a condition that exists whether it is recognized or not, and the paradox that even amidst the tempests and shoals are mountaintops of joy and refreshment.