to whom much is given, much is required

Our kids are growing up thinking times are tough, and they’re not. Things are not tough. America is not in hard times. When you have the luxury to argue, you are living in a good time. A very good time. When you are in survival mode – after 9/11, preparing for a hurricane, digging potatoes for the one daily meal, living through the Black Plague….you don’t have time or energy for discussions and opinions. You just figure out how to live, and when you’ve figured that out, you help your neighbor.

Our kids are growing up thinking Americans are divided by race. We are not. Most of us are a mixture of who-knows-what blood lines and raised on no culture other than “American.” We work, we study, we sell, we buy, we drive alongside each other, with one another, and we don’t think about who has more melanin in their skin. The media – including social media! – needs something to talk about, something to argue about, so race is the discussion today. Look around, drive around, most of us are getting along just fine.

We’re fine. Some of us remember 9/11; we who do, don’t like to talk about it. Some of us remember the terrible tsunami in Asia, while here at home we had a decade straight of hurricanes Opal, Erin, Danny, Ivan, Katrina…one after the next, many more than those. Some of us remember our grandpas talking about World War II and letting the labor camps free – that was not a fun day, it was a hard day, they cried when they spoke about that day. Some of us remember great-grandmas who folded tin foil and saved butter lids to reuse them because you never know when the Great Depression will hit again.

While digging through my genealogy recently, I was struck with how good we have it. We have such luxury! To be able to sit on phones and argue with strangers! We aren’t in survival mode; we have food and air conditioning and cars with gas and we even have our (bless them) media. We don’t have Napoleon coming through and demanding our sons for his army, we don’t have our Bibles burned, we don’t have our guitars and violins confiscated.

It’s important to turn off the negative news cycle and the negative social media spin now and then.

America is fine.  Let’s use all we have to help someone.