two-o-one-two
January 1st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
It’s funny to think that we think we’ve come so far. Technology and parenting practices, organizations to help others, programs for children, every sort of ‘day’ one can think of. We anti-bully, we grandparents day, we bike to work week, we fight a myriad of diseases on specific days throughout the year all with good intention.
We think we’re different. New. Fresh. Innovative. We believe we know better than generations past, we’re smarter, more advanced and clearly our cynicism and sarcasm will take us further.
We long to dig deeper in everything. We use to have to wait for 60 minutes to ‘uncover’ something for us now we simply look on youtube to see what someone, anyone, has to say – and say they do! We long for information, critical, unbiased, hard hitting and true. Yet we find our answers on Wikipedia and we follow truth on our RSS feeds written by bloggers near and far.
It’s interesting to me that the more I read of history, the more biographies, the more tales of days gone past I realize that there is something that hasn’t changed – human nature. The drive for power, for pleasing people, for coming out on top. The desire to manipulate things to go our way, to sound smart, to be better than those who went before us. Our parents desired to raise us better than their parents raised them and their parents the same before them. We aren’t different. Sure, the world around us has changed and we have a new set of tools to operate with but the hearts of humanity – same.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to strive, to learn, to grow. It’s good if we don’t make the same mistakes that our parents made but rest assured we are making our own set of mistakes that our children will stomp their feet and refuse to make and that’s good. We need to learn from the past but heaven forbid we think we’re better than it. We just haven’t had the next generation pointing out all the places we went wrong. Yet.
So New Year’s Day I sit here and I wonder what I should hope, try, challenge myself with, gain, lose, push myself in, give up or take on this new year. My heart sits here like years past wanting things but knowing that I’m fickle and I won’t last. My mind wants to take things on in leaps and bounds and create change and advocate stuff but for why? So I can be that person?
This day is not much different than any other. It’s just the next day after the last one and God willing another one much like this will come tomorrow. So what do we do with that?
I read this Psalm this morning as part of my devotions. I’m pretty sure it spawned the tone for this post but not because it was new, but because it sums up all of what I was already thinking. We are human, finite creatures living in an imperfect world and so – there will always be women working on the streets, and children hungry somewhere in the world, there will be manipulation through power, an upper class and lower class and division amongst them. There will be wanderers on street corners asking for change and there will be people that pass them by thinking they should get a job. There will be arrogance, pride, deceit, fear, self-pity, discontentment, anger and selfishness. These are in our hearts. They have been for a very long time now and I’m quite certain 2012 isn’t the year they cease to exist.
Does this mean we don’t strive? We don’t aim to overcome? Of course not. In fact we must. It is our goal, our call if you are a follower of God, and just a good idea if you aren’t. I mean, what average white middle class person doesn’t want world peace? We do. But this Psalm gives us hope in that it’s not just our generation who has gone so wrong and a reality check in that it won’t be our generation who saves it all. We are human. God is God. Nothing much has changed. The end.
Psalm 12
“Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
May the Lord cut off all the flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.
You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man.
