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Jeremiah 46:27-28. God tells Israel, his people, to fear not, He will save them from their captivity. They shall return to their land and have quiet and ease, and none shall make them afraid. "Fear not, O Jacob my servant, for I am with you." God will make a full end of all of the nations to which He has driven His people, but He will not make a full end of Israel. But Israel will be chastised in just measure, He will not leave them unpunished.

 

Even when we are in the midst of our suffering, God is with us. He sees us, and He tells us to fear not. He will always bring us back to quiet and ease after as long as turn back and stay close to Him. But often we have to be chastised first, like the Israelites in exile. They were not staying close to God, and He called them back to Him by allowing their suffering. The chastisement is no reason to doubt the Lord, instead we should accept the just punishment He gives us as a gift - a path to salvation!

 

The endless slog the world seems to be in right now as it slouches towards Bethlehem for some evil to be born (or to be stillborn) is so wearying, so dispiriting, and so hard. But it is necessary. God is chastising His world which has gone so very far astray. The people, and the principalities and powers, who are doing this to us are like the nations to which God drove the Israelites. He is allowing them this moment of power over us, to chastise us and wake us up. He will, eventually, make full end of them and bring us all home to Him. In the meantime, "fear not."

 

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The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?