It is almost depressing to watch news lately & wonder what in this WORLD is going on? It just seems that news outlets try their best to find only items to fire us up or make us feel everything is spinning out of control. That is one great reason to study - History!! Are you ready for this?? I had history throughout school (even if you leave out the courses taught by our football coaches!!) and I never got it. That lasted til I began teaching it to my children, which of course meant I had to study it, and now I Get It. At least a lot more of it. I get that it is His Story now, not just history. I get that He is always, and has always been, in total control, that all the circumstances, no matter how dire they look(ed) have always been part of His perfect plan. No matter what. I could pay lip service to that idea before but never really got it. Now I am beginning to get it. The Romans were apparently a very advanced society, even when compared to many modern societies. They understood waste & rotten food were bad & to be dumped in a common place rather than streets, they had running water & even a type of sewer system in their cities, and they spent much time on philosophy & art. Yet where are they? They turned so completely and bald-facedly away from God, even when faced with His Incarnation, that they were destroyed. Just the same way most great civilizations have been - from the inside out. They were chipped away by barbarian invasions, but that was because they had become so complacent that they hired soldiers when they could no longer staff their own armies to protect their vast empire; they allowed non-citizens to take jobs customarily staffed by their own; they abandoned "traditional" models of family and societal units; they quit teaching the basics in their schools and favored more "politically correct" subjects, for that day and time; reading and learning fell out of favor and were replaced by entertainment in various forms. Strangely enough, their society began to crumble & then was helped by invaders from the north and east to finally completely tumble. Thus began the Dark Ages.
Could this be repeated in any society today? I have one word for you: Germany. Study Hitler at all and you see he sounded good but was hollow, and complacent Germans let him take over. It is amazing how similar the stories are, and also how similar it sounds to our own story.
However, there is no room for despair: God will only allow to happen what He knows will be for our ultimate good and for His glory. After all, that is what this is all about: it is what we were made for. Soli Deo Gloria!
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