I do family genealogy so I think of those who went before. Yesterday I experienced something new that had me thinking about my grandparents. I voted when I really did not want to. I have been embarrassed, even distressed at the near total lack of adult election activity and saddened that a junior high class president election has far more class and common sense than all but the rarest of recent candidates. I found two candidates I could get excited about, but alas, they were not on the same party ballots, so I had to choose. This reminded me of my grandparent's deep antithesis toward anything "political" and for the first time I appreciated how horrible it must have been for a World War I veteran and his wife who was not empowered to vote until after the birth of their first son; they were deeply wounded when the egregious, arrogant and unyielding political corruption in Kansas City not only left them uncomfortable, but actually threatened and without "useful friends" when the machine was attacking my grandfather's small business. My husband's grandmother never even tried to cast a ballot again after being intimidated and dismissed when her "unacceptable ballot" was torn to shreds and discarded and she was shooed away by machine hacks at her polling place. I'm feeling more sympathetic as this year's vitriolic ads and lack of intelligent discussion of issues has left me feeling less than optimistic about the future of our community and country. What will be asked of us to heal this?
We have a delightful great-granddaughter who will turn two shortly. So in light of the past I wonder anxiously what her journey will be like. Current life expectancy for a healthy female infant born in 2022 estimates this sweet girl could welcome the next century!. What will she experience in 8 decades? What will her great grandchildren face?
From my great-grand father born in 1864 to the potential end of days for my granddaughter into the 2100s is 23 decades covering 7 generations...years of great influence and importance to me, yet a fleeting moment in eternity.
Mark 9:36-37 popped up in my morning reading: "He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.” (The Message paraphrase.)
Our children's children (not to mention the folks who will be taking care of us in hospitals and nursing homes) are facing challenges we never saw coming. My contemporaries seem to invest a disproportionate amount of time remembering fondly "the past" when things seemed so much better than today. Not only do we discount how very bad "the past" was for lots of people who may have lived outwardly "perfect" lives but lived with the same fears, conflicts and pressures that everyone in every age has experienced. But we are turning blind eyes to today's children who are experiencing deeper and more wounding challenges than "in our day." In the richest nation in the world we have money for "pleasures" while children go to bed hungry...not distended bellies hungry, but hungry while watching affluent people on TV "living the good life." We have allowed our legal system to spin so far out of sanity that 1/3 of people are estimated to have some kind of felony record which causes far more problems for the poor than the rich and pushes people out of the middle class into poverty. Deaths July 2019 to July 2021 involving illicitly manufactured fentanyls among persons aged 10–19 years (adolescents) increased 182% -- and the number of OTHER children affected is not even estimated--siblings, cousins, classmates, co-workers, neighbors, friends!!!! In both 2021 and 2022, adults ages 35–44 had the highest rate of drug overdose deaths among people age 15 and older -- and how many more children are expect to experience these losses as they studiously attend and calmly learn in classrooms.
Folks, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me,” says Jesus. Let's pray, let's volunteer, let's befriend, let's be Jesus' love in action in a hurting world. Let each of us courageously pay attention to the truly important! Lord, have mercy!