Greatness as Destiny

It's a quiet Sunday morning at the Bohlender house. Kelsey and the boys are still sleeping and even our terrorist squirrells are taking the Lord's Day to rest. I'm parking in the dim light of the living room with The Monks of the Abbey of Notre Dame playing on the iPod.

Last night, as I was reading in the biograph of John Quincy Adams, it struck me how the times he grew up in were littered with great men. To read the account of his early years is to read of him brushing with founding fathers of our nation on a daily basis. As a teenager, he hung out with Benjamin Franklin & Thomas Jefferson - all three of them in Europe (JQA accompanying his father who, like the other two, was on government business). When he returns, he pays a visit to John Hancock, who is suffering with gout. His sister marries George Washington's secretary. There are more instances than I can relay, but suffice it to say that nearly every day, he walked with those who we would call historical giants of our nation.

I got to wondering - how did so many people that we consider outstanding leaders manage to congregate in a tiny area during a narrow sliver of time? Was it a burp on the leadership grid that put forty or fifty outstanding people in the developing nation all at once? Or was it that the times demanded greatness of the people?

Tom Brokaw asked similar questions a few years back in his best seller, The Greatest Generation. He wrote of the heroism of the WWII generation that seemed commonplace at the time. To be honorable and to do great deeds was the order of the day, and people rose to fill it.

I'm coming to the belief that people are not different - but seasons of time are. It would seem that periods of history demand greatness from people and God gives grace for them to rise to the demands.

I look into the future and realize we are coming into one of those seasons. While not there yet...I believe we will see it in our lifetime. The developments of this age - all pawns in the grand reality of good versus evil - will force us to step up to be who we are destined to be. Will we walk in meekness and power, or go down raging about our own rights?

Some days I look around the prayer room and thing "Who are these people? I live among giants. Some days I look in the mirror and wonder what sort of things time will thrust upon me...and if I will be man enough to fully embrace it.

Enough deep thoughts for a Sunday morning. The squirrell terrorist cell is gathering on the deck. Three of them have cell phones. This is not a good sign.