Sobering thoughts,,,

But worth reading...

It is long past time to get back to basics — to faith, to church, to principles, to relationships, to integrity. We are, I believe, about to be tested in a most difficult and frightening way — a darkness the likes of which we have not seen before, and may never see again. The provocation may be known, or unknown, be it nuclear terrorism, or some yet-unseen financial collapse; a cataclysmic natural disaster; or a butterfly in some unknown location flapping its wings and setting off a chain reaction which ignites the world in conflagration.

I have shared, with more or less intensity some of the sentiments of the author of this post, the sense we're on the edge of a very dark and hard era. And as a child of my culture I sometimes fear the things I may have to face, the loss of my comforts, the pain of losing my soul's flabbiness, the uncertainty of whether I will have what it takes to endure.

Yet at the same time I feel very free and this is one thing I wish the author would have addressed. These hard times are distilling the extraneous from me. I'm far from where I need to be but at the same time I sense a clarity about who I am and should be and more important "whose" I am. Despair leads to questions which lead to searching and then to discovery and rest. I hate the thought of what these times may be like but I feel closer to all the things that matter in ways that I never have in fatter times.