Think so?

A friend has an observation after years of traveling and living abroad.  “If you are in a strange place, find yourself faced with something you are not quite sure of, what you think it is probably is.”  The specific reference was to a funny discussions on strange smells and sights.
 
Right and wrong was, according to our parents, much clearer in the old days.  Candidly, since I lived in today’s old days, I’m quite sure right and wrong has been confusing for every age.  Granted life’s complexity is different, yet the fundamental drivers of life – the need to be along, contribute (or take), and greed (for self or community) – have remained constant.  I listen to the old songs and find the same angst, longing, and celebration yesterday that I do today.  I hear different arrangements, instruments, and volumes.  I find myself listening with relative ease with one song and not another.  Yet somehow the core of what makes a song compelling, the impact is has on my core values and priorities, never changes.
 
In the old New York fish market (it has moved to a new Bronx facility) you knew when it was summer.  You could tell, smell, the location when you were still blocks away.  It was almost as if you were anticipating a medieval scene, as “the corpses, thrown in a heap, will stink like the town dump in midsummer, their blood flowing off the mountains like creeks in spring runoff.”  (Isaiah 34.3)  When you arrived on that sunny afternoon, the scene was still, nothing out of the ordinary to find.
 
When I put the two reflections together I find myself struggling.  Right and wrong are somewhere in the shades of gray.  Yesterday’s arbitrary lines no longer make sense, if they ever did.  This doesn’t mean that everything is good, helpful, and nurturing.  The key lies in two practices.  First, remaining in and with God; letting the Spirit which lives within permeate ever fiber of our being.  Second, recognizing that when something smells what we think it is is probably what it is.