Remember?

I’m a big…no, a huge fan of a magazine called “Reminisce”.  It’s a simple name for a magazine that never fails to evoke a myriad of complex emotions every time I turn a page.

I’m not old enough to remember WWI or WWII, or even Korea.  I am, however, old enough to remember Vietnam…all too well.

It’s striking how the memories of life during the first two world wars and into the 50’s are so vastly different from the memories of those that served in Vietnam and the years since.

Somewhere, we lost something of who we are.

Not just as Americans, but as people.

Our humanity suffered a blow, or more likely, a series of blows, from which we never recovered. 

We went from simple, home-based, people who loved family and things as mundane as shooting stars and babbling brooks, who married forever and raised children to be respectful of others and kind to all; to people who cannot seem to fill the emptiness inside no matter how many bright, shiny, new __________ (fill in the blank) we acquire.

It’s as if a gnawing ache has hollowed out the core of so many people that it threatens to swallow whole the rest of us who stand on the sidelines and shake our heads in disgust and bewilderment.

I mean, in a society where Lady GaGa is revered and Jesus Christ cannot be named, is it any wonder we raise children who don hockey masks and go on a shooting spree inside a crowded mall? 

Where divorce is so common, it’s even available in a convenient drive-thru, yet the Ten Commandments are banned from the public’s view, should we wonder why our children grow up and join street gangs looking for the father figures their own lives don’t provide?

I may speak things that raise ire, but I speak the truth.

The world of 1942 may have had Hitler and polio and Dachau, and yet it had heart and soul enough to put an end to all these things. 

Would we be able to rise to such challenges today?  I don’t think we would. 

The world of right and wrong has become a hazy mist of gray areas, where how I feel about an issue is treated with the same gravitas as whether or not it’s right or wrong. 

That’s wrong. Period.  There is no gray area.  In fact, the world is the same world that’s been here forever and right has always been right, wrong has always been wrong.  Gray has never been acceptable. Gray is where cowards reside, and wrongdoers find refuge.   

I know of some things in life that are absolute – that God is real and His Son, Jesus, is real and there’s going to be a lot of shocked faces looking up to St. Peter when they see him at those Pearly Gates.  

Mine won’t be among them. I will be there, rushing to meet my Savior and knowing I’m finally home.

How about you?

p.s. I thought about putting a disclaimer on this post, saying something about how I didn’t want to offend anyone,  but then I realized that’s something a ‘gray area’ person would say.  So, no apology. And if you are offended….tough. I don’t care.