‘The time is out of joint’

I have been meditating here in my chair for the last hour; it is 2:16 am now, and I have heard one motor in the vicinity, around 1:30 am. I have been, for a couple of years now, sensitized to sounds which seem out of place, and to scenes which appear unusual, to cars and trucks which ride on my bumper, attempting to force me to drive faster to please the driver, and to abrupt disturbances and minor discombobulations ( what a funny word!). The time is out of joint. Shakespeare’s Hamlet said it first.

The cause is not a misalignment of the planets. Or of luck. Or bad fortune. As America’s disjointedness strikingly resembles Hamlet’s Denmark’s, their similar causes, too, have universal origin and roots in the realm of the human heart and spirit. Shakespeare’s genius interfaces with sacred scripture’s divine revelation. Let us take heed and learn.

It is us. When, in the history of humankind, have we worshiped political power, lusted so after it, fostered divisions and disseminated lies, unblinking, lusted so for money and status, and made culture-idols of battleground weapons of warfare, like now? Those false gods have competed with Yahweh for human allegiance throughout human history, but not on the scale of what we see now. The time is, indeed, out of joint.

When have we valued our children’s lives so little that we did not use every power in our means to protect them from harm? When have we rationalized the massacre of our children, and handed the instruments of death back into the hands of the killers? Never before this godless era of blasphemy and self-idolatry, this time of narcissistic evil and rejection of sacred Judeo-Christian teaching, did we behave this way. Death of God blasphemy and rebellion, outright godlessness, and fascististic Nihilism, are the now-modern powers of darkness controlling this fall into ruin and death. And it is a fall into ruin and death. The time is out of joint.

More than a year ago, I changed my voter registration status to “unaffiliated.”. Neither political party is now a party with which I wish to be affiliated. When did this country’s leaders decide that separation of church and state meant leaving Almighty God out of a country’s important decisions? Can we wonder now if our leaders ever did turn to Almighty God for guidance? When will church doors open on Sunday mornings to show us congressional leaders and presidential candidates emerge from worship, newly and freshly inspired by God’s teaching and revelation?

God is not dead! Let me write it again! God is not dead! Our country will die in its sin, if we do not repent, turn from our iniquity, and seek God’s Presence and obey God’s Will.

Our children have died in their schools. That should have been immediately enough to wake us up, stir us to action, bow our knees before Almighty God, seek His forgiveness, and turn us again to God’s righteous Way. More and more people in this country are beginning to feel unsafe. Unbalanced people are believing more and more crazy theories, all of them hate-filled and dangerous. Young people are depressed, and many are near-suicidal. It can seem like a hand-wringing time. Such was Hamlet’s. His full lament continued: “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”

Until we turn again to God in obedience and trust, no solution will turn this tide of self-idolatry. Sin must be dealt with as sin. Mental health procedures and gun legislation can only partially so!ve the causes and consequences of sin and rebellion against God’s Will, in defiant rejection of God’s Holy Spirit and the transformative power of repentance and redemption.

Repentance, redemption, obedience, and trust are our pathway out of this morass of disjointed rebellion against God. The time is out of joint; let us repent.

Let us hear the Word of God:

“Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit…wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”. (Ezekiel 18:30b,31a,32b)

Therein lies our Hope.

This much I wrote and the Journal printed some months ago. Now, the darkness deepens, as we face in the months ahead new threats of unabated forces of violence and disruption, as our country enters a disjointed period of heightened conflict by opposing groups struggling for political and ideological dominance.

Anger entertainment is a new term for me. Its meaning is definitely not a new phenomenon in America. We live in an era of anger and of fear. Our political landscape is controlled by anger and our citizenry are drunken on anger entertainment, lusting for more. We have lost our way.

Only one true way through the darkness and disjointedness is available to us. The prophet Ezekiel named it for Israel, and that Way remains our single abiding Hope. It can be trusted.

Thanks be to God.