Is the world today the way you thought it would be back 10 or 20 years ago?

Mine isn’t.

In some ways, that’s for the better.  I didn’t think we’d have Iphones or Alexa or Impossible burgers.  I’m surprised that there’s great strides in the treatment of HIV, and that they’ve found a vaccine for Ebola.  I am daily grateful for Netflix, and the wonderful people of my church.  Not in that order.

But yesterday, my 50th birthday, had me feeling almost despondent.  Shut down.  Not the way I wanted to feel.

I let two crises get the best of me.

Crisis #1:  Impeachment proceedings.

I’ve not been able to watch the televised proceedings, and so instead I’ve relied on a Smartnews App on my phone, which I’ve since removed.  It shows headlines from 50+ news sources, both on the left and the right, and updates every 20 minutes or so.  I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time–hours every day– reading headlines and articles and refreshing and checking and fact-checking and on and on and on.

It’s gotten so ugly, the fighting and smearing. Such vitriol! Such careless throwing around of “facts”.  And remember when “can’t we just get along” didn’t elicit sneers?

I started thinking about civil war.  I started wondering if that’s where we’re headed.

Crisis #2:  Denominational Mayhem.

In the United Methodist Church, everything is up for grabs.  Once again, polarization has pushed people to one of two main sides, with little help for reconciliation.  Talk has veered from compromise to separation. Despite people’s best intentions, it would take some miraculous work at the 2020 General Conference to keep us together.

Once again, this threat of civil war looms large.

So when I woke up on my 50th birthday, it was into a world I had never expected.  A world where my country and my church both threaten destruction.  Funny, I’d always thought that by the age of 50 my maturity level would have finally caught up with that of my government and my church.   HA!

I want you to know I had a lovely birthday, for the most part.   But there were a few hours there when I dropped the ball.  I dropped my hope.  I felt like giving up.

And now you’re up to date.  I’m 50 and I’m fed up.

I want to tell you about how I got all my hope back…

But I haven’t. Still working on it.

I’m definitely a quart low in the hope department.  I look around the world with my pentagenerian eyes and see so many other things that seem broken. Sometimes it’s too much.

At 50, I thought I’d be able to fix anything.  I thought I’d feel accomplished and powerful.  I thought I’d have gained some supernatural trait called wisdom that could help my world stay Civil, without the threat of War.

My comfort today is Psalm 42, one of my favorites.  When I read these words I am reminded that I am not the first to feel this way.  Somebody else has wrestled with the same thing.  The refrain about hope,  in vs. 5 & 11, invites me to make that my refrain as well.

No witty punchline today.  I just invite you to read this Psalm and remember that the struggle is real, and that God is ever with us.

Psalm 42^[a][b]

For the director of music. 

Have a great week,

Mitch