The world, it seems, is falling to pieces. Each day brings ever worsening reports of war, violence, and devastation. Protests, riots, bombings, beheadings, rapes, kidnappings, persecutions—the list goes on and on. Yet in the Western world, and we feel with foreboding that it likely will not be the last such miserable acts of terror and the further erosion of civil and moral society.

The weight of such tragedies weighs heavily on us. It is hard not to be downcast when we see evil engulfing all we hold dear like a great and ominous storm cloud, its lightnings and blackness overwhelming all. Neither is it a wonder that a growing number of Americans are on anti-depressants and anxiety medication.

What should we do then? How should we respond? I will leave the difficult answers of a public response to those wiser than myself. But faced with a world broken and bleeding, a world in the throes of a great crisis at once moral, social, and spiritual, I want to issue a call to true, personal conversion, a call to sincere repentance.

What should we do? We should fall on our knees and cry out in the words of the Psalmist, Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri….Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us. We should turn from our sins and toward the living God, the God who loves mankind and who is full of mercy and pardon.

Justin O. Smith
March 6, 2019

~ The Author ~
Justin O. Smith has lived in Tennessee off and on most of his adult life, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, with a B.S. and a double major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – minors in Military Science and English, for what its worth. His real education started from that point on. Smith worked 8 years for the LaVergne Fire Department – two years as their clean-up boy – and became a working fireman at age 16, working his way through college and subsequently joining the U.S. Army. Since then he primarily have contracted construction and traveled – spending quite a bit of time up and down the Columbia River Gorge, in the Puget Sound on Whidby Island and down around Ft. Lauderdale and South Beach. Justin currently writes a weekly column for The Rutherford Reader in Murfreesboro, TN, which he calls home, in addition to being a frequent contributor to the Federal Observer – and spend as much time as possible with his two beautiful and intelligent daughters and five grandchildren. Justin Love God, Family and Our Majestic and Wonderful America, and am a Son of Liberty.