Does your heart start pounding when you watch or listen to the news?
Many of us know that feeling, because it's obvious that emotions run high on all sides. Lots of speculation--and fear.
That makes it a good time to remind ourselves that our good old USA has been in turmoil before and this probably won't be the last time that's true. Whatever our current crises may be, this time likely will end up being another variation on an earlier period in U.S. history.
If you doubt that, just read this editorial from Harper's Magazine. It appeared in their October 10, 1847, edition, 175 years ago.
(Please note at the time this was written it was socially and politically acceptable to use the term "man" to refer to all of humankind.)
It is a gloomy moment in history. Not in the lifetime of any man has there been so much grave and deep apprehension; never has the future seemed so dark and incalculable.
In France the political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty.
England and the British Empire are being sorely tried and exhausted in a social and economic struggle, with turmoil at home and uprising on her teeming millions in her far-flung Empire.
The United States is beset with racial, industrial and commercial chaos, drifting we know not where.
Russia hangs like a storm cloud on the horizon of Europe--dark, menacing and foreboding.
It is a solemn moment, and no man can feel indifference, which happily, no man pretends to feel in the issue of events.
Of our own troubles no man can see the end. ...
What if we took that essay as encouragement instead of gloom?
History--all of it--is loaded with missteps and mistakes, repeated again and again. Yet the sun keeps rising and setting on schedule and so does the moon. God set it up that way.
Here are a few quotes and Scripture verses I pray would be heart-lifters for you as they are for me.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. --Franklin D. Roosevelt
[Jesus said] "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."
Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. --1 Peter 5:7
Courage is fear that has said its prayers. --Dorothy Bernard
May you find JOY in your day-to-day,
Lenore
