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I just responded to a fellow blogger’s post she did about Central High School in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Here’s the link to her blog: Any time it takes 11,500 soldiers to assure nine Negro children their constitution rights in a democratic society, I can’t be happy. – Daisy L. Gatson Bates | Rangewriter (wordpress.com). Rangewriter did an excellent job describing a very dark point in the history of my city. Her words brought back to memory the hate, fear, confusion, and downright dissonance that period in our history produced. I was only seven years old at the time, living in Cross County about 120 miles from Little Rock. I remember the adults going on about something happening in Little Rock. A few years later, when the heat of the Civil Rights Movement began to leave cinders throughout the United States, I got a clearer picture of what the crisis at Central High School meant.

I know the handle of my blog is Old and Blessed. One might think that a title like that would indicate that I’m in a state of Godly bliss all the time. Oh, contra my friend. Although I do look for blessings on every hand because I know God has sewn them throughout his creation, I suffer from the effects of ongoing, unconscionable acts of inhumanity perpetrated for no sensible reason at all. The United States has become a shooting range for lunatics to end the lives of strangers, wars are no longer rumors as stated in the Bible; people are moving farther apart because of resolvable issues; hatred and disgust is growing about people most of us have never had contact with; and through it all, our politicians continue to fiddle about like Nero as things slowly burn to the ground.

What I just described is not a complete portrait of the mess we all find ourselves in these days; however, I think it does give you, my dear reader, a hint of why my heart aches. Yes, I know you might be thinking I’m not displaying the attitude of a good solid believer in the message of hope and salvation delivered by that famous Jew 2,000 years ago. If you’re thinking that, please remember this: Luke 19:41-44, English Standard Version, “And when He drew near and saw the city (Jerusalem) he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up barricades around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you, and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Who am I to deny the honest experience of an aching heart when the Son of man had such. As I survey the landscape of humanity, I see that we have trashed it with so much of our unnecessary darkness; we never give scabs an opportunity to heal, because we continue to add salt and open them again.

My heart aches, but I hold unto hope; hope that the cycle of stupidity will end one day.

I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.