Anger!

As I view the dusk fading to darkness, it has been a really great weekend.  Saw three great singing groups last night in Mansfield, OH and loved ever moment of it, had safe journey down there and back and slept well.  Today has been excellent with getting to attend a spiritually uplifting workshop with a young man and former student that God has drawn us together for His Will to be done.  The meteor I wrote about a few days ago is now a smoldering ash so life goes on and God continues to amaze me.  But there is one underscore to our life today in America that increasingly concerns me ... ANGER!

My reality check into the depths of this rage came this week with the degree of venomous rhetoric about a couple of articles I posted to Facebook.  Regardless of the topic, I watched the swords of anger clashing on my FB page in opposing views to the article.  That is great for I select the articles with one criteria; does that capture the most impactful issue in our world today as it implicates our future?  But the degree of angst splashed on comments about the article left me realizing the degree of real, verifiable fear, worry and anger that abounds in our world today. 

Americans are angry with the economics, the politics, the on-going global issues Americans now seem incapable or unwilling to weld presence and force of influence upon. Americans are angry with race, campaigning instead of leading. Americans are angry such as with all the things Congress has created and should be working on, banning tobacco from Major League Baseball seems more important. I had to just sigh when I watched that unfold. The list is long so I will cease the listing to make my point.

Those of you that really know me know a doomsday prophet is not one of my gifts.  But the seeds of anger can erupt into full scale revolt and that is what I see as I peer across the bow of this great ship.  In my lifetime I never would have thought I would see some of the things happening in our world as I do in our current time.  One, because I am so close to it every day, is student loan debt.  There is anger, justified anger, building on this as students begin to realize the anchor they are carrying around into their adult working lives with six digit debt burdens.  I literally hurt when I realize each semester the hundreds of thousands of dollars a single class is staring at for years to come.  What that causes me to do, however, is work even harder to insure that each student receives the very, very best of me for they certainly are deserving of it. I mean, after all, they are OUR future, right, so it is the return on investment that I look toward in the capital expenditure for each student until one proves they are not worthy. And yes, I do have an occasional one that proves unworthy.

In my closing, I wish to say once more that I am extremely encouraged by the students I get to see and work with.  They are a great generation tooled much more strongly than my generation at the same age in so many ways.  But one tremendous concern I feel heavily is the family model so many of my students have not been blessed to experience thus to emulate.  Single parent, blended, multi-partner relationships are the new norm and how that projects into this new generation is, well, frightening which I think of the potential implications.  THAT angers me!

This is a great nation, it has been greater, but realizing with all the noise of our world, the world's villagers still look to the United States of America to calm the fears, soothe the hurts, attack the bad guys and let's them sleep at night and have a meal when they wake up. THAT is the America I grew up in, workd for, served for, and long to have back.  America has chosen to step aside from our God and I absolutely believe that same God is letting us have a painful, acidic taste of just how bad it can be without Him.  As Bill Gaither so wonderfully wrote:

Without Him I could not nothing
Without Him I'd surely fail
Without Him life would be hopeless
Like a ship without a sail

Seems pretty descriptive of America 2011 doesn't it!  By the way, this is fixable for it, like life, is a choice.  Be blessed on Sunday.  Go to church, be part of a worship experience, love somebody you may not necessarily like.  As a great friend of mine likes to say, so correctly ... BE NICE, Mr Williams.