William Butler Yeats captured this dark mood in his iconic poem The
Second Coming, written just after World War One – seen in those simpler
times as “the war to end all wars.” Among the more famous lines of that poem
are these:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
Yeats predicted – but without any comfort about what it meant:
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
Little did he know, of course, that the Second Coming had occurred
almost 170 years before and that the “anarchy loosed upon the world” came in
the aftermath of the Last Judgment, which still reverberates around us. But we
still have the comfort of the Lord’s teachings about His love and providence to
give us hope.
When we suffer through spiritual conflict we are assured that “good spirits
and angels from the Lord in every way disperse that doubting attitude, all the
time preserving a feeling of hope, and in the end strengthening an affirmative
outlook.” (Secrets of Heaven 2338, 2234.1)
Our hope and “affirmative outlook” also are nurtured by the knowledge
that the Lord’s providence is operating in every least particular of our lives,
leading to a good end – and that this is also true in every least particular of
hu man history, as hard as that may seem to believe at times. “Those who are
in the stream of providence,” we are assured, “are at all times carried along
toward everything that is happy, regardless of the appearance of the means.”
(Ibid. 8478.4)
This number also warns that “those not in the stream of providence are
people who trust in themselves alone and attribute everything to themselves.
Theirs is a contrary outlook, for they take providence away from the Divine
and claim it as their own. It should be recognized also that as much as we are
in the stream of providence, that much we are in a state of peace.”
That “state of peace” is constantly challenged by the choices of those
who are not looking to the Lord, and a looming future that is anything but
encouraging. It comes down to trust.
“People are concerned about the morrow when they are not content with
their lot, do not trust in God but in themselves, and have solely worldly and
earthly things in view, not heavenly ones.” But those who put their trust in
God “are altogether different. Though concerned about the morrow, yet are
they unconcerned, in that they are not anxious, let alone worried. They remain
even-tempered whether or not they realize desires, and they do not grieve over
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