Generations

 By the time you wake up tomorrow, another year will have come and gone. Some say it’s a new chapter, a fresh start, a way of marking the end and the beginning with much fanfare and pomp. Realistically, it’s just another day, a means by which we keep track of time as it marches to the beat of the great Conductor.

There is nothing magical about a new year, but who am I to stand in the way of a good time? Some people make resolutions, others reflect, and more yet still hope that the new year will be better than the one they just traversed because although they dare not speak of it to anyone, they don’t know if they can handle another year like the one that just made its final bow.

As far as yours truly is concerned, I’ll likely be counting sheep by eight o’clock, up by three, with no discernable difference between today, tomorrow, or what will be the day after tomorrow. I’m a creature of habit. It works for me. Throw any change in my day-to-day as far as travel, bedtime, or new experiences, and I get downright discombobulated for a few days.

I didn’t use to be this way. From the age of twelve to the age of twenty-two, I was on the road with my grandpa some nine months out of the year, never knowing whether the next bed we’d sleep in was lumpy, smelly, or had preexisting tenants in the form of bedbugs. If I were to psychoanalyze myself, I’d say it’s likely the reason I’m so hung up on habitual practices today. I like not having to wonder if I’ll find a place to sleep once I get to my destination. I like not having to roll the dice on whether or not the chicken wings I just ate at a rundown truck stop will make me violently sick.

Yes, times have changed; it’s gotten easier to travel, to confirm reservations, to see whether other people have gotten sick from the place you planned to eat and left a review. Still, there’s no place like home, and I traveled long enough in my younger years to know this to be a factual statement.

 If the whole resolution thing works for you, godspeed. It’s not like I’m a gym rat or anything, far from it, but I try to avoid going the first two weeks of every year like the plague because I know it will be overstuffed with husky people smelling of cabbage and bologna trying to work up a sweat. Two weeks is usually all it takes; then everything gets back to normal; those who were going to the gym before the new year continue to go, and those who started because of a date find other things to occupy their time besides stretching spandex beyond decency, and all reasonable allowances.

One thing that stood out this morning as I was well into my first cup of coffee is that come next year it will have been forty years since my grandfather received his message for America. It doesn’t seem like that much time has passed, I even did the finger math for a minute, but sure enough, 2024 will be an entire generation since the message for America was first delivered.

Although I am not into numerology because I think that’s a rabbit hole that can lead to seeing messages in everything from the discounted price of spaghetti sauce to the mileage on your car, there is significant evidence that God has a preference for the number forty when it comes to dealing with nations.

The big one everyone knows about is that Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years. Saul, David, and Solomon also ruled Israel for forty years each, the interesting thing about that being that each of their reigns was visibly divided between twenty years of abundance and twenty years of lack.

I won’t even go into all the times 40 days was significant in the Bible, such as God destroying every living thing on earth by flooding it for forty days or that both Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days each because that would be stretching, and I don’t like doing that for obvious reasons.

I don’t know. It’s just something that stood out this morning that I thought I’d share because it seems significant, even though I’m uncertain as to why.

What I do know is that this nation was given an entire generation to repent. Nineveh got forty days to sort itself out. When judgment does come, no man will be able to fault God for not granting enough time for repentance. No man will be able to say this nation was not given enough time to repent, turn from its wicked ways, and reconcile itself unto God.

Could it still happen? Could repentance still sweep the land, and as a nation, we fall on our faces in sackcloth and ash? Theoretically, it could. Anything is possible, but we sure are cutting it close.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.