I haven’t posted in a long time, on purpose. I had to think about why I was posting in the first place. What was I trying to achieve as a blogger? How was blogging helping, or hurting, God’s work through me?

I haven’t resolved all those questions, and I am still thinking and working through that. I am considering posting here again (partly because this blog is largely unread – heh).

I’m posting today because of a few quotes in this Walter Russell Meade article that I read this morning. Let this sink in.

God hates the quiet life, I think. He wants us to break a sweat on our passage through this vale of tears.

. . .

And finally, says the Holy Week story, God shares. He rides Hell’s roller coaster of personal, political and economic uncertainty with us. He knows the failure and the pain that comes with real life in a real world. He does not answer our questions about evil and suffering with a series of propositions. He answers us with a presence, his, in the middle of it all.

. . .

There is no guarantee that any of these questions will be answered in ways that we like. Those who expect doctors or politicians or scientists or economists or theologians to make the uncertainty go away are doomed to frustration.

. . .

We are not just living in interesting times; increasingly, these times look adventurous. Prepare yourselves, friends. God loves us with a fierce and terrible love, and he really, really thinks it’s time for us to grow.

I am a certified NASA nerd, especially when it comes to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. I just can’t read enough of the history of those missions.

Which brings me to Walter Cronkite. Cronkite was a great broadcaster, and he was huge in the sixties, serving as the voice that many would turn to for broadcasts during our space missions. Naturally he is quoted often in Apollo look-backs.

Today I read this quote on the website for the PBS show Race to the Moon:

Newsman Walter Cronkite remembers the year of Apollo 8: “The whole 1960s really culminating in 1968 were the most terrible decade, undoubtedly, of the twentieth century and very possibly our entire history, even including the decade of the Civil War. America was divided as it never had been since the Civil War and by the Vietnam War, by the civil rights fight.

As a student of the histories of the twentieth century, and also as a Civil War enthusiast, my first though upon reading this was . . . well, it’s just a crazy statement he’s making here. It pains me to speak ill of the departed, but when he said this, was he out of his mind?

The 1960s . . . worse than the 1910s? Had he considered World War 1? Worse than the 1940s? The world had a bit of a scrum in that decade too, one that makes Vietnam look like a pillow fight. Then there was the dust-bowl and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“The whole 1960s really culminating in 1968 were the most terrible decade, undoubtedly, of the twentieth century and very possibly our entire history . . .”

Worse than the 1860s?

This is, pardon the expression, nonsense on stilts. The decade of the 1960s had its challenges, but, my goodness, it was a cakewalk compared to many other decades in our history.

I think many people have a skewed perspective regarding the importance of the 1960s. I guess this is just another example. But . . . wow.