The Unfolding of a Bright Future

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

What happens when everybody in the world is just exhausted?

I ask this because this is what I’m hearing from everybody. Given the news of our world, and reality of our lives, everyone I know right now seems to be feeling a sense of complete exhaustion.

Some of us are sheltering at home. Some of us are working. All of us are living with the fear of a continued rise of the pandemic and the scourge of both racism and police brutality. Some of us fear the world spinning into chaos.

Does that about cover it?

Not since 9/11 has it felt like so much of the world is spinning up into…what? What are we spinning towards?

That’s the fear.

Here’s what I know.

The only way through is through. Jesus chose to walk right into Jerusalem, even though he understood it would likely cause him his life. There was no getting to “Easter” by routing around the pain of Good Friday.

I tend to be a fundamentally optimistic person. I happen to believe we are groaning toward a better world. We are inching forward toward it. But as you may have also heard me say, I don’t believe that “progress” happens in a straight and upward line. 

I tend to believe it loops back, as it continues forward. 

“Two steps forward, one step back.”

Our faith in God can help us through these times. It’s deeply important and humbling to remember just how little we control. So much of what happens in our world, or even to our own bodies and life, are beyond our ability to control. 

At times like this, I fall back on Desiderata, a poem written by Max Ehrmann, an Indiana Poet. Many people wrongly believe it was an ancient writing discovered in an old church. In fact, I have a copy of the poem on my wall, here in my study.

It’s been on the wall of every home I’ve lived in since high school. And my copy wrongly attributes the poem to “Old Saint Paul’s Church 1692.”

I was initially crushed when I found out it wasn’t ancient, and was just written by some dude in Indiana.

But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it made the wisdom all the more poignant. Max Ehrmann understood modern American life. He understood what we are going through.

And so, the line of the poem that speaks so deeply to me in times like this is:

“…whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.”

“The universe is unfolding as it should.”

It’s chaotic, yes, and it’s filled with terrors. But God is there, in the midst of it. God is still God and we are still God’s children.

And whether it is always clear or not —and at times like this, it often feels very unclear— “the universe is unfolding as it should.”

In your prayers, continue to pray to God that we move through this challenging time.

But also continue to trust in God and have the faith that in ways we cannot see, a bright future is unfolding for God’s world.

Eric Folkerth