The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

On this snow-day break from school I finished reading our school-wide literature selection for next month, A Tale of Two Cities. The opening words "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. . . . " have leaped beyond the cliche category for me and now call to mind images from the story--of imperious noblemen forcing peasants to pull their carts, and offer their women for the entertainment of any lord who desired it, of widespread starvation, and subsistence on foraged grass and leaves when food ran out. Meanwhile, others lived in unimaginable luxury in opulent homes–fortress-like castles actually–built with the labor and taxation of the poor.

Set against the background of the French Revolution in the late 1700s and restive England at that time, Dickens reveals the horror that often erupts when one group of people inflicts prolonged suffering on others. In the brutal turnabout that occurred in France, the oppressed eventually became the oppressors. Peasants, who had seen their countrymen slaughtered at the guillotine, later hauled nobles and kings and queens by the cartload to the beheading machine.

In Dickens’s tale, the people who try hard to do what is honorable and right suffer as surely as those who care only for luxury, power, and revenge. Lately, I’ve heard too many true stories about people who are, right now, in similar dire straits to shrug off the story as being one more overly melodramatic story, although in literary terms, melodramatic certainly applies. For this reason, perhaps, having read the story leaves me feeling melancholy. It probably doesn’t help that two of our sons are traveling today–one en route home from Bangladesh where he embarked this morning on a 36 hour trip, exhausted, and with a fever. Our second son left at midnight for a 20-hour drive to Pennsylvania, trying to outrun a snowstorm on his heels. These are not epic concerns, in the greater scheme of things, but I feel vaguely concerned anyway.

Right now, in Kenya, long regarded as the showcase for democracy in Africa, people we know and love are mostly confined to their compound while the countryside around them erupts in chaos and violence. Many Christian friends have sought refuge in their quarters while their own homes went up in smoke and people around them died. Finally, some of them have traveled by bus to their tribal homelands eight or nine hours away, where they hope there will be safety in numbers. A few unfortunate married couples have had to separate because they are of different tribes and are not both safe in the same place. The buses, even with police escorts, are hazardous. On a recent Saturday, five out of seventeen were torched, and some of the passengers were killed.

All this happened after a Kikuyu president refused to give his position to a Luo candidate who apparently had more election votes than he did. As I understand it, television cameras trained on the “vote counting house” recorded successive updates as the count progressed, showing the Luo candidate with a substantial lead. Then, still in view of the TV cameras, government soldiers arrived. Very shortly, an announcement from the “counting house” declared the incumbent Kikuyu to have won the election. What a travesty! Understandably, but tragically, the Luos have revolted, and the Kikuyus have struck back. . . . The miserable story continues. Wherever a majority of either tribe exists, the minority is in grave danger. Things have gone very quickly from the best of times to the worst of times.

In Orissa state of Northeast India, where individuals from our church help support about 20 pastors, Hindu opposition has made life very dangerous for Christians recently. My brother Lowell and others have gone there regularly in the past number of years to provide teaching and encouragement. Their group leader has visited here and preached in our church. He is a very devout man, gifted and educated. In this area a number of years ago, Graham Staines and his two young sons, died (ten years ago?) when a mob set fire to the vehicle where they had gone to sleep when guests needed their beds. I’m not sure if these people have ever known the best of times, and perhaps this is not the worst of times, but the inner peace of Christian faith clearly costs these people dearly.

The "cliche" could apply as well to the time of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland and Germany around 1520. It was a glorious and heady time of rediscovering the power of the Word of God. Grebel, Mantz, and Blaurock led many in a rediscovery of what it meant to live a Christ-like life. Vision, fervor, and resolve flourished. Then the worst of times intruded. Their trusted early leader and mentor, Zwingli, later led out in persecuting the Anabaptists, who did not have the will of the city councils of the Swiss Confederation at their disposal. In Germany, Luther denounced the Anabaptists as heretics. People who joined the Anabaptist movement were imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Even so, the numbers grew.

Last week, I worked on tracing the male immigrant ancestor of my eight great grandparents. They arrived in this country from those unwelcoming Swiss cantons and German territories in a span of years from about 1730 to 1860–from six to ten generations ago. My ancestors in faith and blood endured varying degrees of suffering for more than 200 years. The worst of times went on and on for them.

How do people survive unalterable and unbearable circumstances like this?

Perhaps they did as I have sought to do recently again in the face of my own perplexities and disappointments. Each day I seek to learn more of what is right and act accordingly. I try not to over-process every option and possibility, and then I offer things to God again to dispose of as He sees fit. It’s a small resolve for small crises. I hope if big crises come my way I will find, as others before me have, bigger resolve for bigger crises. Even if I someday face the worst of times, I want to get to the end with my faith intact, whether that end is sooner or later. And then, in the final and ultimate sense, the best of times will commence.