Mandy's Mercurial Monologue

Tonight as I am listening to music I used to love, I find myself going from one time in the past to another and feeling that I can't settle anywhere. This brings to mind the last moments our cat Poe spent at home before we rushed him to the vet at the end of his life. He couldn't move his hind legs, but he willed himself from chair to chair under the kitchen table, trying to find a place of comfort. They had all been satisfying before, but now nothing worked. That's how life feels now. Something drastic has happened, a tragic change, and there is no way to get comfortable or if there is, it won't last. I feel I will be torn from it... like Poe trying to grab the final chair and hang on as I picked him up to head to the car. Now I feel sick to my stomach, not about the past so much as the present and the future. In seminary we discussed civilizations under collapse; people try to recapture previous times, idealized and romanticized versions of the past, o

I am not thinking about the election, nor the embassy staff abandoned to their deaths on 9/11/2011, nor the fact that Mrs. Clinton may well never be held accountable by any earthy authority for what happened there. I am thinking about the correct understanding of Ezekiel 38-39 and the determination of people to equate Russia with Gog and Magog, and that it probably doesn't matter if we get it right or wrong at this point. Somewhere I read a great quote that prophecy is not about knowing the future, but about recognizing the appointed time it when it arrives. World War III seemed right around the corner in 2014, but two years have passed. Assad continues to fight against rebels while giving those of his people under siege very little to live on or hope for. Thus ISIS grows in the instability of Syria and Iraq. Now Russia has entered the fray. They cannot win on the world's stage with their continued aggression against Ukraine and their economy is sinking under the load of