In The Year Of Our Lord

   Did you ever concentrate on the hands of a watch, trying to detect their movement? If you make note of the time and then stare at your watch for half an hour, you’ll never see the hands move, and yet at the end of the session, time will have elapsed and the face of the watch will have changed. It’s quite frustrating isn’t it? So it is with our nation’s drift away from the Lord. Though you might compare today to your vivid recollection of yesteryear and see a marked difference, you probably can’t detect any slippage since last week.

  I saw an article recently pertaining to our classification of dates with respect to the life of Christ. We grew up with “BC” which represents the years before the birth of Christ, and “AD,” an acronym for “Anno Domini,” Latin for “In the year of our Lord,” referencing the years since Christ. Seems a fitting system for a nation founded upon Christian principles which unashamedly boasts mottos like “In God we trust” and “One nation under God.”

  The article pointed out that not every citizen is a Christian, and perhaps our terminology will be offensive to those who do not believe as we do. They suggest adopting more universal terms for referencing dates, such as “BCE” (Before Common Era) for the years that we refer to as “Before Christ.” Its counterpart, “CE” (Common Era), should be used to refer to the years after Christ’s birth.

  You might be asking “What difference does it make?” Well, not much, perhaps, but if the Lord tarries, in the years to come true believers will still not be able to observe the movement of the hands of their watches (if their watches even have hands), or the day to day drift away from our nation’s “Christian” moorings. But every occasional glance at the hands will still prove the passage of time, and every occasional observance of our nation will still reveal its drift from one day in the year of our Lord to the next.