Those were the days – Not!

I am in the midst of writing the part of my book that deals with living through the 60’s. Those were turbulent times and there was tremendous angst in the streets.

The Vietnam War raged and thousands of young Americans were dying each day in the jungles of Vietnam. Young people were being drafted right out of high school to fight this very unpopular war and travel thousands of miles around the world to die in a jungle in some God-forsaken place that no one had ever heard of before, because our President and congress told us that it was a worthy cause. They could have bombed them into the next millennium, but congress elected to dictate what targets could be bombed and which ones could not, effectively hamstringing the military professionals who thought the object was to win the war. The war dragged on year after year with virtually no progress and the casualties rose to the tens of thousands to beyond fifty thousand. The young people who were drafted to fight that war often violently protested it and clashed with the police and National Guard troops.

Blacks and whites were segregated. Blacks had their own restaurants, schools, stores, and living areas, whatever. I did not ever attend a school with a black person in it. They could not vote and had to use separate bathrooms and water faucets in public places. They had to sit in the back of buses and a sign indicated where they could sit. They went to the streets stirred on by people like the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights marches were commonplace and so were race riots and the violence of groups like the Black Panthers that incited more violence and burned down large portions of cities and widespread looting occurred. We saw the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and later his brother Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We saw James Meredith attend Ole Miss and Mississippi National Guard troops were used against the people of Mississippi to ensure his safety.

The cold war was on big time and we saw John F. Kennedy in a showdown with the Russians over their putting nuclear missiles in Cuba that could have destroyed half the world. Finally Russia backed down. We saw America promise to support and then go back on that promise to support freedom fighters in the Bay of Pigs which allowed them to get killed and Castro to remain in power to this day.

Rock and roll music was born. Young people in large numbers rebelled against our “great society” in general and the war in particular, starting in major colleges and universities and spreading to the streets of many cities. Drug use including the so called mind expansion drugs such as LSD, STP, PCP, and Mescaline exploded and a group of young people with long hair and who wore wore Tai dye clothes and headbands with peace signs on them dropped out of society and became drug abusers and known as hippies.

Today we are in turbulent times too and there is tremendous angst in the streets. Terrorism and the 9/11 attacks. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cold war revived with Russia and others, the economic turmoil that has ravaged us, out of control congress filled with corruption, unprecedented influx of illegal aliens, an explosion of drugs of all kinds, moral decay.

Each day as I write my book I have been listening all day to the top 100 hit songs by year for this period of time to refresh my memory of what it was like back in those days of the 60’s. I even wore a headband with a peace sign on it one day. I wonder if in years to come someone will remember these current days in similar fashion. I wonder if they will try to record what it is like today in a book while sitting there listening to their “gansta” rap with their tattoos and piercings and reflecting back on the bad, er, good old days.

Are you enjoying all of the progress that we have made since the 60’s?

Hmmm The Bible predicts that the world will continue to decline right up until the Lord says, “Enough!” and returns for His children and destroys it all as He did in the days of Noah. We have made a mess of things have we not?

Aren’t you glad that God is the same today, as yesterday, as He will be one thousand years from now? He will remove the instability, the injustice, the horror of war and death, and sickness, and crime, and evil from our midst and we will enjoy peace and there will be no angst

Don’t fret or be broken hearted about our country or just “stuff”. Yes we should and must be repentant for what we do individually and as a society, but also we should “rest in the Lord” as the Bible instructs and not be fearful of what is occurring. Christians will suffer tribulations and trials along with everyone else, but in the end we will get through these days just fine.

Through it all He will never forsake us. Indeed He draws near to us as He prepares to save us from ourselves.

Psalm 34:18
The Lord is near to those who
have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a
contrite spirit.