Tuesday, May 17, 2022

That Perfect Moment

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!  

Psalm 133:1

A Perfect Moment is, by definition, only 60 seconds, or shorter, or, at least, not much longer.  In many places Scripture is fluid as to time’s length, a day can be as a thousand years, or the other way around

As much as time may be relative, and seem longer or shorter than you, or others see it, one consistent fact about a moment is that it has both a beginning and ending.   A hug begins at some point, and is momentary…it ends when the embrace does.  The same can be said of human harmony.  There are times when all seems right…until it isn’t.  And, when that realization happens, it may become the twelve-second lead on the nightly news.  There is a reason police consider the call to a domestic dispute as potentially one of the most dangerous events of any day.  When the harmonious hug ends, the belligerent battle may kick-in. 

And woe to the bystanders!  Bystanders in the wake of disappearing harmony are described in many ways:  victim, refugee, casualty, collateral damage, just to name a few.  Everyone knows some of these; many (maybe you) have been these.  It is a story as old as Genesis, when Adam’s family brotherhood was broken with Cain’s using a rock on the back of Abel’s head to make his point.

If you have experienced harmony at some point in life, you’re aware of its sweetness.  But you are also likely to give testimony of it’s brevity. 

Most generations long for that harmonious culture of everyone getting along.  The founders of the American dream of equality and opportunity wanted a nation to undergird the rights of all to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.  But, as one critic observed, we’re guaranteed the right to it, but pursuing it is up to you. The builder generation (which gave the world my parents) lived through a depression and two world wars.  They imagined harmony would be achieved with the establishment of the “United Nations” – an end to future wars, and happiness with peace for all.  How’s that working for us?  The boomer generation, offspring of the builders [my hand raised here] chased harmony via the sexual revolution.  It’s a little naïve to suppose peace and serenity can be achieved in the most intensely-passionate of human relations.  And the current generation is as certain as all their predecessors the key to harmony will be found in shaming others for their lack of harmony.  Or pinning another peace and love slogan on their forearm or neck.  At the risk of joining the fun in all that shaming, that’s as effective as putting a bandaid on cancer.

Harmony has no easy answers, no GPS to lead you to that perfect moment of brotherhood.  And, even in the most picturesque selfie of the happy hug moment there is the grotesque reality looming that it will be just that…a moment.  The illusion of having arrived at lasting peace is also just that, a vapor, a cloud that can be blown away by even a gentle breeze, let alone the storms of our day.

For You Today

There is a way to harmony.  It is to be found in putting aside all notions that we can achieve such by human effort or ideology alone.  That’s disillusioned arrogance at best.  Rather, the only hope for lasting harmony is what Jesus preached to the crowd that day, recorded in Matthew 5-7.  This Sermon on the Mount was no litany of rules and regulations for religious zealots, it was the attitude and actions that describe Who the Prince of Peace is, and what His followers would look like, the peacemakers, the ones who hunger and thirst after righteousness with everything they think, say, and do.  And they start with anyone who crosses their pathway.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©   

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