His Love is Here to Stay

The more I read the papers, the less I comprehend.
The world and all its capers and how it all will end.
Nothing seems to be lasting, but that isn’t our affair.
We’ve got something permanent,
I mean in the way we care.

…And so did Ira Gershwin pen this beautiful preface to his brother, George’s melody. Somehow these words seem to relate to our reading in Luke 21:5-19. Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics to Love is Here to Stay as a loving tribute to his brother who had just died at 39. The song speaks of love’s permanence in an ever changing world. Ira would have no way of knowing how prophetic his words written in 1938 would be for us in 2016, as we witness the passing of what we thought would be indestructible pillars of our culture and society gradually erode like the song’s “passing fancies.”

A few years ago I had the chance to visit the high school from which I graduated. I had attended this newer more “modern” building for the last 6 months of high school, since my school was no longer habitable and had to be torn down. At the time of my visit I couldn’t resist driving by my childhood home and pause for a while and allow the memories to take me back. Only the front door remained the same. While I did not expect to recognize anyone I would have known, I was able to re-create people and places by super imposing my memory on the scene.

Not unlike those who resisted Jesus’ prediction that the temple would one day be destroyed, I too thought these icons of my youth would last forever. Yes, there is an ache that comes from seeing so much of what we thought would always be, be no longer. But I suppose the older we get the more we know that nothing temporal by its very definition is eternal.

Jesus prophetically speaks of unsettling things that we like to think are just spiritual metaphors. But the current devastation from the earthquakes in Italy, the ongoing war in Iraq and genocide in Syria are terrible reminders that the things we hold so close are just passing fancies and in time will go. Even if these words don't resonate in us today, the time will come when they just might. Blessedly then, as now, Jesus’ promise remains, “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”

God is watching out for us and His love is here to stay.