I get a little irritated when I hear people say,
"I am not sure I want to bring children into this
world the way things are today." Sometimes it may
be older folks and they say, "Things are just so
much worse today than they used to be, I don't
know how young people can make it now."

We think that if we could have lived in some other
time and place things would have been simpler and purer,
and it would have been easier to raise our children.

I always rather thought I should have been a pioneer
Me, who can't stand a cold house, HA! I've loved
the thought of hoop skirts and lots of crinoline, yet
I am somewhat claustrophobic and would probably have
been locked up when they tried to tighten the stays.
Joel always wanted to live in the time of Knight
Errantry. He wanted to fight the dragon and win fair
lady. Hattie thinks the Indians and their way of life
was a better and higher way.

But God is sovereign. He has put me and each of my own
children into this particular time and this particular
country and even his particular community for a very
particular reason. (Okay that was a little repetitious.)
But, the point is made. God is never caught off guard.
He is not surprised by what happens around us. If indeed
history is really what we claim it to be, His Story, then
He has put us exactly where He wants us and it is all for
some very glorious purpose.

Now there is great confidence in that truth.

Finrod in The Lord of the Kingdom says it more eloquently.

"‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’
said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live
to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that
is given us.’

Throughout my life I periodically have indulged in
wishful-thinking: I have dreamed of having been born a
century earlier, or perhaps several hundreds of years
before, when the world (in my imagination) was much
simpler and more to my liking than these days in which
I find myself. Many of us long, I suspect, for days
that never really were as we want to believe they were.

But God did not fall asleep on his watch, only to waken
and discover that he was late in tossing me into life.
I am where I belong. I do not get to choose the state
of the church of my time, or the cultural battles that
rage, or the theological slide that I perceive.

My - our - only decision is what Gandalf lays out:
“what to do with the time that is given us.” Paul said
as much, too, exhorting us to be always “making the most
of your time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15-17).
This means I must choose wisely and I must be diligent:
I cannot live either in the past or the future; I can
only live today and do what I may as long as it is called
today.

These days may seem black and dark, but all days are so
to those engaged in spiritual warfare. There is glorious
light to behold one day, but not yet - not while the Enemy
still opposes our King and his purposes. My job is to do
as I’m told and not wish it were otherwise."