These Are Days of Miracles and Wonders

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV

A quick scan of yahoo news in the morning is all the convincing needed. An earthquake in a California border town moved the entire town two and a half feet. In February a tremor in Chile, one of the largest in recorded history, slightly changed the earth's axis and moved the town ten feet. Scientists have fitted a cat with bionic legs. Another team has restored vision to a man's damaged eye using his stem cells.

Marine biologists studying sperm whales in the South Pacific have discovered the earth's largest mammals have concentrations of toxic metals in their blood and tissues, chromium,cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminum among others, that are sixteen times the level considered dangerous. Biologist Roger Payne believes these man-made contaminants threaten the whales with extinction, and could lead to the collapse of the entire food chain in the world's oceans. Much of the earth's human population depends on the seas for vital protein.

A Portland masseuse told the Oregonian former Vice President Al Gore sexually groped her in a hotel room at a luxury hotel in October 2006. He had been in town that night to give a speech at the Rose Garden on global warming, and requested a massage. The details are sordid. She recalls them with convincing detail. I'm dismayed but not surprised. Portland police never prosecuted because of a lack of sufficient evidence. The Gores announced they were separating a few weeks ago. At the time they insisted there was no affair or scandal. The timing of this story seems curious, and sad. Human failings have no limits, no boundaries, no borders. A man can seem mild-mannered and principled and well-behaved, and disgrace himself in the most common way. My life couldn't stand that kind of scrutiny. Could yours?

There's no pattern to any of this and no cohesive meaning. If I have a thesis at all in what caught my eye today it's simply to say the world around us is chaotic and uncertain and often unrewarding to view. Meaning and hope have to be personal. Your love, your worth, your belief and your admiration have to be invested in those close to you, those you truly love and know. Public figures are brought down every day in base and demeaning ways. Disasters come. Dire predictions follow. What gives meaning to life, and sustaining grace, is the child you hold in your arms and the one you love. The reliable miracle we have is each other. The wonder is we make through the chaos. And we couldn't possibly, without remembering always and holding on for dear life. We have to trust and love and rely on each other, because the world is an unmanageable mess, and the people running it aren't much better.