Rev. Don Campbell
2 Kings 20-21
THOUGHT FOR TODAY, August 2, 2019
“PEACE IN OUR TIME”
The Munich Agreement was concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy. It provided “cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory” of Czechoslovakia. Most of Europe celebrated the agreement because it prevented the war threatened by Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland, a region of western Czechoslovakia inhabited by more than 3 million people.
Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, returned from the meeting and waved the agreement before the crowds, saying, “The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Chamberlain had bought peace in his time at the price of 3 million voiceless Czechs. His peace-at-any-price sellout lasted less than a year.
Isaiah spoke to king Hezekiah: “Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Listen to this message from the Lord: The time is coming when everything in your palace—all the treasures stored up by your ancestors until now—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. Some of your very own sons will be taken away into exile. They will become eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king.’ Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘This message you have given me from the Lord is good.’ For the king was thinking, ‘At least there will be peace and security during my lifetime’” (2 Kings 20:16-19).
When a generation becomes so self-absorbed that it cares only for its own comfort, it always sells out the next generation. This self-absorption does not necessarily involve gross immorality. The first generation might be chasing the dream of a comfortable retirement, the dream of being recognized as “one of the best,” “dying with the most toys, or other earth-bound dreams. Chasing dreams often results in neglecting to live.
David knew that to finish well, one’s focus must not be on peace-in-my time, but on declaring God’s glory: “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come” (Psalms 71:18).
CONNECTIONS
1. Solomon said that there is “a time for war, and a time for peace” (Ecclesiastes 3:8). Peace-at-any-price is very short-lived. What battles—whether spiritual or material—should we be fighting now instead of leaving them for the next generation?
2. Once again, we turn to the senior tempter, Screwtape, to see what this self-absorption looks like: “In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy’s hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor” (C. S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters.” XXIX). Do you see evidence that the nation is in a moral stupor? What about the church?
