Every Generation has Something “Like this.”

A few days ago, I was sitting around the lunch table with the kidlets.  Rocketboy sighed and remarked, “I’m tired of all this. I just want it to all go back to normal.” Of course, that’s something we can all heartily agree with! How two weeks has turned into ten months is something to stretch anyone’s patience.  But then began a discussion about how every generation has something “like this.”  Not a virus or pandemic exactly, but it’s always *something* big that will inevitably come along to make life difficult, to change viewpoints, to make us gravitate to things of hearth and home, to remind us to hold our loved ones a little bit closer.

I told him that for my generation, it was 9/11 that was the game-changer.  No one could have predicted such a sudden, shocking tragedy.  Culture itself changed afterward.  At least for a little while.

The more we talked, the more came up.  Apparently, we (his parents) have lived during interesting times. Rocketboy piped up with the end of the Cold War, and then we included the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Good things, yes, but view-shifters nonetheless.  There was also Desert Storm. And although we say it with a chuckle these days, Y2K… even that was a huge worry for some.

My parents’ generation had Air Raid drills in schools during the height of the Cold War.  They had the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of a President, then ten years of Vietnam, and before that, Korea.

The further back you go, the easier it is to see that there was not a single generation without that certain “something” that happened to “shock and awe” society back into holding onto the *actual* important things in life.

For some reason, that fact in itself is a bit comforting.  “What has been will be again, what has been done, will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.” – Ecclesiastes 1:9

Maybe we need events like these periodically to break us out of our complacency. Maybe we need a hard smack on the back of the head, so to speak, in order to remind us that *nothing* happens, that is outside of God’s control.  Jesus reminds us in John 16:33 that, “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble.  But take heart;  I have overcome the world.”  ‘

Previous generations have made it through their difficult times, and with God’s help, we will too.

What events in your life have been view-shifters?  Let us know in the comment box below, we love to hear from our readers!

And since Christmas is nearly here, check out this link for one of our favorite Christmas Cookie recipes!