Leaving home for work this morning I began wondering what I would do to keep myself safe at work today, because my wife said, “Be safe”, as she habitually does every time I leave for work. Then, I had a recollection of having witnessed, some years ago, a man somewhat younger than myself making the sign of the cross over himself and taking a few moments to pray just prior to ascending very high in the air within the basket of a large man-lift to perform a construction task. Maybe he did this because it helped him to deal with some fear of heights he may have had, or perhaps in order to try and make himself right with his God just in case he was killed in a fall. Maybe he did it for both reasons… I dunno.
What I do know is that I don’t exactly feel safe given what’s going on in our country these days; with these reports I’m hearing and seeing of civil protests turning violent, widespread rioting and looting, iconoclastic protesters tearing and knocking down historic symbols of societal values and authority, etc. Much of what I’ve been hearing and seeing compels me to think that what I’m feeling in the face of such things is probably how my great grandparents were feeling when they fled with their families from their Russian homeland just prior to the Bolshevik revolution, just over a century ago. Remarking about that time period, Alexander Solzhenitsyn summarized as follows:
“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I personally believe that Solzhenitsyn got it right, and whether we choose to listen to him and to accept this vital truth or not, it nevertheless remains true that if men forget God, then none of us will ever be safe – at work or anywhere else.
… And so, on my way to, as well as while at work, I prayed.
What I do know is that I don’t exactly feel safe given what’s going on in our country these days; with these reports I’m hearing and seeing of civil protests turning violent, widespread rioting and looting, iconoclastic protesters tearing and knocking down historic symbols of societal values and authority, etc. Much of what I’ve been hearing and seeing compels me to think that what I’m feeling in the face of such things is probably how my great grandparents were feeling when they fled with their families from their Russian homeland just prior to the Bolshevik revolution, just over a century ago. Remarking about that time period, Alexander Solzhenitsyn summarized as follows:
“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I personally believe that Solzhenitsyn got it right, and whether we choose to listen to him and to accept this vital truth or not, it nevertheless remains true that if men forget God, then none of us will ever be safe – at work or anywhere else.
… And so, on my way to, as well as while at work, I prayed.
