CCL Jerry Downs
Now, with apologies to A. A. Milne, we are one. And that off-key warbling you hear in the background is me singing Happy Birthday, Cry, Beloved Country. (O-o-o-r, possibly, it’s your tinnitus ramping up again.)
That’s right. Cry, Beloved Country is officially one today. (Have a piece of cake. Do you take anything in your coffee?) As of midnight last night, I’d posted 171 times, had 38,124 hits and received 698 comments.
(That’s not counting the 372 spam comments trying to sell timeshare resort interests and Android tablets and Ugg boots and, well, pretty much an endless parade of things. You’ll be happy to know I spared you all those.)
Most of my readers live in the United States. However, I’ve also had visitors from Canada, Mexico, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Egypt, South Africa, India, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Guam and New Zealand.
Gentle Reader, I appreciate you stopping by. Thank you. This time last year, I had three visitors one day, six the next, and none the day after that. I felt kinda silly sitting here declaiming to an empty house. Thank you for stopping by, and then for stopping by again.
And, in case you missed them the first time around, my top ten most widely read posts were:
- Phoenix man jailed for home Bible studies: the rest of the story
- Hannukah: in those days at this time
- The face of gendercide
- New evidence of George Zimmerman’s racial attitudes
- Body Worlds at OMSI: death porn for kiddies (and others)
- An open letter to Hilary Rosen from a stay-at-home mom
- What really happened at the county Republican convention
- West Point: R Day 2012
- People with disabilities: our seething prejudice
- S.B. 1813: IRS to have power to confiscate your passport
So. May I ask for a birthday present?
- If you have any comments or suggestions I’d love to hear them. It’s a little tricky to find the reply link, I know. But if you look under the big Share/Save bar at the bottom of this post you’ll see a couple of “Posted in” and “Tagged” categories in red. After them is a red hyperlink that says, “Leave a reply.” Click on that, and from there, it’s quick and easy.
- Also, if you’ve enjoyed Cry, Beloved Country, I’d love it if you would pass it on to a friend. (That’s where that big Share/Save bar down there comes in!)
And, again, thank you.
Happy birthday, Cry, Beloved Country! I’ve read many of your posts and learned a bit (often, a lot) from each one. Also, Carolyn, I’ve heard you sing and you do that very well, too!
Thank you, Monique!
Hi carolyn!
I’ve been deeply enthralled with our current state of the world and Biblical prophesies from Daniel and Revelation. Sad to say, those around me, mostly believers, are fearful in discussing the topic. Not because they deny it, but mostly because they recognize it but don’t want to to face it (not yet). My heart is heavy for my own home and children, I’m so looking forward to the rapture yet trying to stay focused that right now, we’re still here and there’s still work to be done. My kids are teens and I’m stumped as to what kind of hope to give them for their future…this world is so different from what we grew up in. Scripture flows in our home, yet my sudden indulgence in all of this is shying them all away abit. As a Godly wife and Mom, do you have any suggestions how I can encourage them with hope (though I myself question the existence of their future – marriage, kids, grandkids, etc), without freaking them out, or causing a permanent division in my home. My heart longs so deeply for this conversation to take place, but I’m definitely on egg shells and have to be very gentle. Any words of wisdom or encouragement would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Lisa
Hi, Lisa–
I’m reading St. Augustine’s City of God right now with my 15-year-old. Augustine wrote it in the early 400s, shortly after the Visigoths sacked Rome. Everyone had thought Rome was The Eternal City–it had not been successfully attacked in 800 years–and then, suddenly, in 410, the Visigoths poured into the city and spent three days looting and destroying. And people discovered that what they had thought was the stable and unchanging center of their lives . . . wasn’t.
It was, in other words, a time much like our own!
Augustine wrote to encourage people to shift their deepest focus from what he called the City of Man to what he called the City of God. (Remember Hebrews 11? Abraham looked for “a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God”?) It’s really a very biblical concept. 1 Peter 1.12(ish): “Fix your hope completely on the grace (favor, goodwill, lovingkindness) to be brought to you at the revelation (revealing) of Jesus Christ.” Jesus is revealing Himself continually to his people through the words of Scripture and his Spirit and his people and his creation. And he will reveal himself overwhelmingly when he returns. I often fix my hope on Rome in one way or another–on America, or the results of the presidential election, or a safe and secure and happy life for my children, and so on. But none of those things is assured, or lasting. (Everything that can be shaken will be, says the writer of Hebrews; only that which is unshakeable will remain.) That’s why Peter has to tell me to move my hope from them to God’s grace, which increases the more of Jesus I see.
We’ve had a long period of peace and overwhelming material prosperity in this country, while much of the rest of the world has been going through very difficult times. Historically speaking, the aberration wasn’t their hard times. It was our good times. But it looks as if our turn is arriving by express mail. Two years ago, when civil unions were legalized in Illinois, Catholic Archbishop Francis George said (I’m paraphrasing but pretty close): “I expect to die in my bed. My successor will die in prison. His successor will be executed in the public square.” If he’s anywhere near right, we’d better not be promising our kids anything other than the grace to be brought to them–first, day by day, as they experience Jesus revealed to them in Scripture, and by his Spirit and through his people and his creation, and second, on the day he returns.
We don’t know what the future will look like, but we know that God will be in it. And that, in Jesus, he is (as the psalmist says) “for us.” And that the plans he has for us are (as the prophet Jeremiah says) “plans for well-being and not for calamity (though there is often plenty of calamity in the short run!), to give us a future and a hope.” So I think we have to put our hope, not in things being a certain way, either for us or for our kids, but in God being a certain way: a gracious God who, through Jesus, promises us his unending love and commitment and favor.