When dwelling on political ephemera and dealing with the tribulations that crop up in our day-to-day, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and, with that occasional loss of cosmic focus, perhaps also easy to lose hope.
After all, we have much to concern ourselves with and much that might prompt us time-bound creatures to despair.
There are, for instance, foreign entanglements that may soon embroil us in horrific global conflicts; cultural forces that seek to undermine our relationship with the truth and strike at the pillars of our civilization; and politicians who seek to subordinate the will of the many to bolster the power of a select few. Wars, iconoclasts, and tyranny are nothing new, but in the grand scheme of things, they are newly conquered.
In the Near East just two millennia ago, God became man and dwelt among us. Like many in America and across the world, I hold true that He conquered sin and death and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against His pilgrim church on earth.
The Catholic political scientist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn — hailed as a “great teacher and a great man” by William Buckley Jr. — underscored in “The Timeless Christian” how “Christ broke the power of Satan so that since Christ’s sacrificial death we live in an eschatological period when evil is fighting only a rear-guard action, even though this can effect quite considerable destruction of the good.”
In the pages of TheBlaze, often we report on the nature of that rear-guard action, whereby evil, marked for annihilation since the crucifixion, does significant damage in the here and now. But upon prayerful reflection every morning, I am refilled with hope and gratitude, recognizing that no matter how seemingly insurmountable our daily battles, the war has ultimately been won on our behalf.
What’s more, it wasn’t won by remote decree. It was won in person in the ultimate form of revolution, when the Creator washed the feet of and suffered at the hands of his creations, dying so that we might live.
G.K. Chesterton noted in “Orthodoxy” that “Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king.”
Like our rebel God before his ultimate act of rebellion, we can break bread with our friends and families on Thursday knowing that we have the love of the Father and the support of the Holy Spirit — and that we share in the Son’s eternal victory.
I am doubly grateful to God this Thanksgiving, not only that I should have had this time on Earth with my lovely wife, unborn daughter, and wonderful family, but that after our age has passed, we will meet again, having been freed from sin and death.
I pray that you and your families, both created and saved by the perfect source of all love, truth, hope, and wisdom, have a wonderful Thanksgiving in the knowledge that while we continue to fight the good fight together, victory is forever ours.