Out Our Way: Writing on the wall - Daniel 5

Out our way, working with livestock is often a "contact sport." I have been kicked, stomped, bitten, and tossed more than once. I expect most folks who deal with critters can say the same. Sometimes it came without warning - but generally I simply was paying attention to the signs.

I was once on a friend's ranch up in the Bear Paws just off the Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation and we were standing around chatting when a young calf came wandering by. My friend got the idea it would be fun to tease the little tyke and started making threatening gestures and noises. The calf began to show signs of nervousness at my friend's antics. His mama was nearby and noticed the going ons and began to become agitated. She began stamping her feet and moving toward my friend, who ignored her. Then she lowered her head and started shaking it. He still ignored her. Finally she started lowing and picking up her pace as she moved toward the obnoxious rancher whose wife shouted at him to get up the fence and out of the way. This time he paid attention and leaped up to the top rail before Mama got to him and started stomping. The wife chastised her husband for being so dumb and pointed out how Mama had given him plenty of warning before she acted. He had to admit it was indeed his fault for not paying attention and ignoring the " writing on the wall." It's not like he hadn't been warned.   

You have likely heard and read the famous quote attributed to George Santayana, "Those you cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It is often brought out these days along with citations of George Orwell's famous works "Animal Farm" and "1984," in which so many of the things he wrote in his futuristic and mythical works are actually taking place today. But Orwell didn't create the scenarios - he simply looked at history and the way so many past errors were being repeated as Hitler and Stalin were following the same old playbook of past dictators and failed tyrannies. Today we see others in power doing the same and anticipate the same destruction and collapse. 

Ultimately, the thing all tyrants have in common is the belief that they can replace God with self and the majority of society will go along with it. Caesar thought so, as did Napoleon, as did Hitler, as did Stalin, as did Mao, as did Castro, as did Pol Pot ... and the list goes on and on. But what none anticipated was the simple fact: "There is a God - and none of them are Him!" As with Belshazzar and other self proclaimed "gods on earth," the writing is on the wall. Their self delusion - and that of their gullible followers - always ends up in the trash heap of failed dynasties. 

Today we see the taunts and mockery of some powerful folk who believe they, not God, are supreme. Many are deluded by the pop "gods" of the moment into believing the lie that history has exposed over and over again. And they ignore the warnings that their cardboard temples and idols will once again not withstand the wind of God's judgment. They never have and they never will.

Remember that Russian priest who, in the midst of the pogroms against believers in the old Soviet Union remained confident that even with the media, academia, and the government out to reject God and the Church just laughed. "Lenin, Stalin and the others all said the Church was nothing but 'babushkas' (old ladies) and would die out in a generation. They are the ones who died but the Church lives on. What they failed to understand is that our 'babushkas' never die!"  

The writing is on the wall.

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The Rev. John Bruington is the retired pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Havre. He now lives in Colorado, but continues to write "Out Our Way."