WISDOM & STRENGTH
TOUGH TIMES REQUIRE TOUGH SKIN, TOUGH CHOICES AND COURAGE
By Vicki Hinze, ©2008
As a nation, we face a significant challenge. It is seated in years of corruption and greed and living beyond our means.
One recently said, “The party is over.” The problem is many of us weren’t invited to the party. We don’t drink, we didn’t party, but the hangover has been dumped on us to suffer.
This fires our tempers, of course, but even more importantly, it sets us to thinking. Yes, we have our share of those who are not fiscally responsible and those supposedly serving us who are not. But many of us are responsible, so why is this happening to us?
I remember once in first grade when a student did something they shouldn’t have done. Because that person wouldn’t fess up and take personal responsibility, all of us had to write lines. Twenty-five of them, which is enormous when you’re a brand new writer. The teacher said, “When the guilty don’t do the right thing, the ‘good’ have to suffer for the ‘bad’.”
That was true then, and it’s apparently true now. We’re living it.
So on a spiritual level, the question changes radically for believers. We know that God is with us. That He will never abandon us. That he is our fortress and strength. And that if we follow His laws, putting Him first in our lives, then we will rest under His wing, sheltered and find rest. We also know that if we believe and do these things He will heal our land.
Many do believe. But many in this nation worship power and money and it corrupts them. Greed corrupts.
This raises a lot of questions in my mind, beginning on the spiritual front. God doesn’t cause bad things to happen; we do, expressing our free will. But we do live with collective consequences, and the collective consequences coming now are going to be hard to stomach.
Yet even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And because it is, we take solace in knowing that God turns things bad or harmful to us for good.
That’s pretty hard for many to take from concept to real life.
GOD IN ACTION
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose." --Romans 8:28 (KJV)
We’ve all been victims in one sense or another--unfair attacks, betrayal, bias, false accusations; the list is endless. But it’s important to remember the long-term impact of those situations.
Typically, the truth is revealed. Sometimes it takes a while, but it gets out. Sometimes it negatively impacts us short-term but puts us in a position we wouldn’t have been in that allows something good or better to come into our lives. Often we discover that these trials by fire forge our own ethics and strongly impact our decision to not do those things to others.
We take positions, stands, are slower to judge and quicker to be open-minded to discover the truth, which evil and greed often attempts to obscure.
It’s important to look back at our own lives and ask when we grew most as human beings. Was it during easy times or tough times? When we were soaring or trudging through mud?
What events had the greatest impact on our lives? Which ones insisted we look within and determine the person we wanted to be--or to not be? Which did us the most long-term good?
By long-term, I mean forever. Eternity. Not just this day or week or month or decade.
So we’re facing a bitter pill that’s knocking us to our knees. And many of us think the people who caused the problems can’t be part of a true, real and lasting solution because they’re not accepting responsibility for their actions or even acknowledging that they did anything wrong. One reader said to me yesterday, “The nuts are running the asylum.”
Perhaps a bit more colorful than I would have put it, but there is truth in it. Of course, one must look beneath the spin to see it.
Spin never removes truth. Even when buried, it remains intact.
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