The Cycle of Time

I am at the age today, that my father was when he died of heart disease. That is a sobering thought for me. My heart is good, it's my brain that I have often wondered about. But seriously, when the patterns of your life begin to resemble your parents, you are recycling a time that was. I never thought I would go out and order one meal, and then share it with your spouse.  I never thought I would be going to bed before 9pm, but I am finding myself doing that quite often. I never thought I would be saying things like, "but did you tell them, did you explain the truth to them?"  I remember my mother repeating that phrase to me whenever there was an issue about the truth. It seems that we do repeat things in our lives that our parents or grandparents did or were characterized by and that is true with history as well. When I was growing up I had a fascination with history, in fact it was the only course in high school that I got an A because I was so overwhelmed with this thought: "History repeats itself."

I thought, if that statement is true, then why don't we learn from our mistakes of the past and stay clear from them? Good question. I suppose it's a little like the parent re-enactment, there is something in the DNA of the species that acts out how it is wired. Israel repeatedly acted out this process time and time again. A good king would come to rule, and then the next two or three kings were wicked and self centered.  Those wicked kings would bring the worship of the gods from the nations around them, incorporating that worship into the established worship of Jehovah. They compromised so much and so often that the end result was that Israel strayed away from the one true God.  Now that didn't happen once or twice, it happened a dozen times or more throughout their history.

What does that mean for you and I, and the church today?  Quite frankly we are experiencing a blending of culture and the gospel to the degree that the gospel is no longer what the Bible describes the gospel to be.

There is little to no emphasis on repentance where we are aware of how our sin has separated us from a holy God.  There is a re-engineering of the scripture to allow for behavior that God calls an abomination. This empahsis has been penetrating the thological barriers of the church in such a way that we stopped talking about it from the pulpit. In many Christian circles they have begun the process of fully accepting this alternative lifestyle as normal. Support for Israel has been losing ground in favor of a home land for the Palistinians. As Christians we are no longer separate from the world, we have become the world. We have become the world with no plan to change the world, so the world is changing us. It is history repeating itself. As I was told recently, I am beginning to act like the "old man" my father was before his death, and we in the church have become more like the "old man" of our sinful nature. History does repeat itself.

Keeping it honest and truthful.....K