Essentials of Life

I love watching a storm roll in. The kind of storm that you know will be harmless. Just a little thunder and rain. No tornadoes or hail or devastation.

Sometimes you can smell it, feel it, sense it in your bones. This storm is going to be different.

And sometimes, the storm starts brewing long before the lightning strikes.

Like this one.

We smelled it, when we let the schools cut the arts from their curriculum in favor of "essentials," and the wind changed.

When we forgot being "under God" was what made us "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," and the thunder rumbled.

When sports took over our Sundays, trumping Church and family picnics, and the sky turned an ugly shade of green.

We began believing that beauty...music, literature, history, art, religion...wasn't quite as important as it used to be.

Not needed.

Not essential.

Like our dog Daisy, we voluntarily put our heads in the box full of tasty kitten treats.

There was plenty to eat, air to breathe, and everything we thought we needed to exist.

Until we realized we've stuck our heads in a trap of our own making. And we're stuck. In the dark. Alone.

We flounder about for a bit, trying in vain to get out of this mess...but without help, we're done for.

We can choose to sit here in silence and hope for the best, or we can bark for all we're worth. Howl, cry, and beg for someone to save us from this mess we've made.

Because we can't get out on our own.

We need Someone to come and save us. To lift us out of the prison of darkness.

And when we see the Light again, we won't trade it for all those "essentials" that stole the beauty from life, little by little, bit by bit.

Because, like Daisy, it's up to us.

We are the ones who will decide whether or not to put our heads back in the darkness of the box, for the promise of a treat.

Because it wasn't a government, or a president, or a governor, or a mayor that decided what was "essential."

It was us. We decided long before this mess.

Now, when the world goes back to "normal"....

Will we choose a life of the essentials for existence, a life so much less than the one we were created for? Living in the dark ages, of chaos and poverty of spirit, with only those essentials we deem necessary for base survival?

Or the life of beauty, and Light, and Life in the Son? 

Because we got ourselves into this mess on our own.

Maybe it's time we let Him lead us out of it.

"The preceding “Dark Ages,” which lasted for hundreds of years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, had been a time of chaos and poverty...Farming and mining all but ceased entirely. Travel was dangerous and trade routes were unused. Birth rates dropped, and disease and infections decimated undernourished human and animal populations. Western art and culture were virtually non-existent except for what was protected by Christian monks and missionaries. The clergy held fast to the traditions of reading, writing, manuscript illumination, and panel painting in order to maintain the Christian faith." https://www.illustrationhistory.org/history/time-periods/the-middle-ages