Daily Lesson for February 27, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews 1:10-12:

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment,
12 like a robe you will roll them up,
like a garment they will be changed. [1]
But you are the same,
and your years will have no end.”

Yesterday the Washington Post published a piece by a man named Neil Howe about his 1990s book "The Fourth Turning", which is said to be a major influence on the thought of President Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon. In the Post piece, Howe suggests that we are living in a "fourth turning" -- a time of "crisis", where the old forms of civic, economic, and political, life are no longer applicable and are soon to be (cataclysmicly?) replaced. An at-length quote from the article so you get the picture:

"Get ready for the creative destruction of public institutions, something every society periodically requires to clear out what is obsolete, ossified and dysfunctional — and to tilt the playing field of wealth and power away from the old and back to the young. Forests need periodic fires; rivers need periodic floods. Societies, too. That’s the price we must pay for a new golden age."

This sounds scarily dystopian and indeed the unknown is our greatest fear.  It gets even more unknown when he talks in the article about how fourth turnings usually involve wars. Scary and dystopian indeed. Yet, what he says actually sounds a lot like someone not at all remembered as dystopian thought and talk -- Jesus of Nazareth. Remember, it was Jesus who said there would be "wars and rumors of wars" and that the foundation of the Temple would fall stone by stone. Not exactly optimistic.

Is there any Gospel here?  Just this, and the kernel with what Jesus was trying to teach, that there may be wars and rumors of wars and all our known institutions and jobs and way of organizing may be burned up in John the Baptist's forest fire.  But as Jesus said, "This is not the end."  For in the end this is not where we stake our ultimate security or allegiance or trust. Changes come and go and sometimes cataclysmicly so.  Heaven and earth may fall, but God's words, and promises, and hope will endure.

This is our rock, our cornerstone, our firm foundation.

And as Billy Graham reminded us from the pulpit of Washington National Cathedral in the days following 9-11 and in the calm before our first war in this century, the old hymn says:

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.