Monday, May 05, 2008

Discernment of the Times




My mother in law is almost 92 years old. She was born in 1916 into a family steeped in poverty and stuck in dysfunction. The large family lived in a tiny house making a hard scrabble living in southern Illinois and barely made it through WWI, the great flu epidemic of 1918, The Great Depression, WWII, outliving four husbands and rearing two girls almost alone.

Because of her grit, hard work, faith in God and the blessing of living in America Hazel has lived a wonderful life. Last week I asked her how many times she had been overseas and we counted five trips to Hawaii, two to Israel, several to various places in Europe and all around the USA. In some ways Hazel is a poster girl for American exceptional ism, upward social mobility and how a rising tide raises all boats, even the desperately poor in origin.
We are living in a unique time. About 100 million Americans have lived through the past five or so decades and have also benefited from the material, spiritual, educational and economic tide. Robert Fogel won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for writing about the dramatic changes in the lives of Americans over the last century and the implications for a giant spiritual awakening.

Go to Amazon.com and look up Fogel's book, The Fourth Great Awakening and get it with Lindsay's Faith in the Halls of Power to see what God is up to in the 21st Century.

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