2020 - A Year of Clear Vision

Well, we are halfway through 2020 and what a first half it has been! I had been looking forward to 2020 for a long time. This was going to be the year of clear vision when we would be able to see things with a precision and accuracy of a person with 2020 sight. It started out just fine, then kaboom!

A microscopic virus closes down the planet. Racial tensions reignite. It’s downright depressing following the news, and things are not looking much better for the second half of this much anticipated year.

I really thought we were beyond all this.

Plagues were something from the middle ages. You would think that with all the medical and technological advances of the last century that we would be able to deal with a virus. Hadn’t we found all the cures? Couldn’t all the bright minds of science come up with an instant vaccine?

Racial tensions were the issue of the 1960’s. Hadn’t all the legislation made it clear that we are all created equal? Didn’t Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement put an end to racism?

I guess not!

2020 was the year we were supposed to see clearly into the future – a future filled with health and peace. We were hoping that our 2020 vision would reveal how far we as a human race had come. We were expecting to see progress and unity.

Instead, our 2020 vision has revealed how far we are from what we should be. Our 2020 vision has exposed how susceptible we are despite our advanced intelligence and our progressive social thinking.

Oh, 2020 has helped us see clearly, but it has hardly been what we hoped for. The world is broken and we can’t seem to fix it. Any hope we had that with more knowledge some utopian society is within our grasp is gone. Any hope that justice will someday be administered flawlessly has vanished.

This has come into clear focus – we are hopeless. We can’t learn enough to keep us healthy and we can’t enlighten ourselves enough to keep us at peace. If hope has any hope it must come from somewhere and someone other than this world.

Isn’t that the message of the Bible?

• This world has been irreparably broken by sin. But God has promised to make all things new.
• He has prepared a place immune to all disease and devoid of all hate. But it’s not planet earth.
• He is gracious enough to invite us and even qualify us to live in this new world. But we must have faith.

2020 has opened our eyes. God help us see.