After all the pomp and circumstance, albeit rather subdued this year, of the Inauguration, let’s put everything into perspective. We heard promises, plans, and platitudes. In the long run, Shakespeare said we are all actors on the stage with our entrances and exits, and generations and legacy legends aside, we are parts of the panoply of history, here but for a short time. God is sovereign. God is eternal. And whether Garth Brooks sings it, or today’s hymn reminds us, God’s plan will prevail. Isaac Watts wrote these words in 1718. “O God, our Help in ages past, Our Hope for years to come, Our Shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal Home./ Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame, From everlasting, Thou art God, To endless years the same./ A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night, Before the rising sun./ Time, like an ever-rolling stream Bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day./ O God, our Help in ages past, Our Hope for years to come, Be Thou, Our Guard while life shall last, And our eternal Home.” Amanda Gordon, in her stirring poem at the inauguration yesterday put it this way: “For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.” May we today leave a legacy of peace in our thinking and words and actions.
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