Imagine: you can’t set out a Nativity scene unless you provide it with guards. If you don’t, some Far Left wack job will come along and trash it.
This incident from the Ukraine goes back to before they started shooting each other over there. Somehow it gives me the image of an orchestra tuning up.
Our Lord will have a big job on His hands, saving this fallen world.
I wonder where He’ll start.
Ben Stein, who is Jewish, wrote a piece on how he regards the celebration of Christmas, manger scenes, etc. He stated that, even though this does not fit with his Jewish beliefs, he doesn’t take offense when someone wishes him a Merry Christmas, because they are simply seeking to include him in the joy of their celebration, and in no way intend to belittle him.
About a week ago, I participated in a “quiz”, which was in reality a trivia contest, hosted in Britain, and centered around Christmas, and Pop Culture. Among the participants, was one person with a distinctly middle eastern name, and for that matter, the organizer of this has a middle eastern name, but was culturally quite British. This could prove interesting.
Myself, and one of the other Brits, took a commanding lead. I had the advantage of knowing music, so I did very well on Christmas song questions, but British customs and the associated nomenclature were not my strengths, so the Brit made me work for every point I scored.
At one point, there were a series of pop culture questions, including references to super-hero movies, and I quickly dropped into the lower half of the pack, but I resurged and came in second, overall, with my British colleague taking first place.
What was interesting was the younger fellow with a middle eastern name. He was in last place, most of the time, although he did ok in some of the recent pop culture questions. But he never seemed bothered by this, and was a cheerful and enthusiastic participant, even when the questions may have been completely foreign to his life experience.
All of us came to this quiz with advantages and disadvantages. I was exposed to very simply Christmas customs as a child in a family of modest means, I know little of British customs and when the questions were about movies of the last 20 years, they might as well have been speaking in the lost language of the Indus Valley. OTOH, when it came to anything music related, I had a distinct advantage that no one else would share; I had made my living learning and playing songs, and I dominated that portion of the quiz.
It doesn’t matter, because we were there to have fun, and have fun we did; all of us, even the guy with the middle eastern name, who was at a major disadvantage, because of having come from a culture which knew little of these customs. He had fun, and we were grateful to have him with us.
“ Our Lord will have a big job on His hands, saving this fallen world. I wonder where He’ll start”
I had a length conversation on this subject, with a close friend about this very subject, within the last couple of days. The point of all this, from the heavenly perspective, is to save as much of mankind as possible. As we see egregious injustice, it’s frustrating to watch, but people learn by observation, and come to realize that there must be more to the story than what appears on the surface.
My parent’s generation saw WW II, and it was sobering, to say the least. This is one of the reasons we had the “Leave It To Beaver” world of the postwar era. People valued freedom and wanted to see good for their hard work, especially after seeing what had happened in the War.
These days, the lessons of WW II, and for that matter, much of history, have been lost to a vast swath of the population. Current events have returned us to horrors which are reminiscent of WW II, and the scale of conflict is growing. While I am not happy to see these things, hopefully many will see just how evil thangs can get, and will respond by placing their faith in our Lord.
We watch a lot of British TV; I wonder how we would’ve done in the quiz.
They are nuts!
It can all start with a landslide election of Trump with the Senate and House. America is still the leader of the world, and who is the leader has great influence on the thoughts of everyone.