"Nowhere to Run to, Baby"?



You might be old enough to remember a popular song from the 1960s by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. It was called "Nowhere to Run", and the chorus was Martha belting out how she had "nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide." And she was singing about nowhere to run nowhere to hide from a man who treated her badly, but she still love them.



In another sense, that chorus seems to echo life. All of us want some sense of normalcy. All of us want to feel that we are in control. And sometimes people do some pretty irrational things to try to get the upper hand again, or at least think they're getting the upper hand. But what can we do biblically, in times of uncertainty, is there really nowhere to run? Nowhere to hide? We'll talk about it on today's Grace and Peace Radio.







Welcome to Grace and Peace Radio is a Christian living blog and podcast dedicated to engaging conversations and Applying God's Word to everyday life. Thanks for joining us for today's episode. I'm your host, Anthony Russo. And it's my hope that you will be encouraged and God will be glorified. And with that, let's start the show.



Hello again everyone I'm Anthony, your host, it's great to be with you again, we're today we're talking about where do we find hope in times of uncertainty. Now I'm going to tell you up front in this segment, we're going to talk about a little dose of reality. Okay, we're going to get to the ugly truth of a few things. But promise me you'll stick around for segment two. I promise you, there is hope. But don't jump there yet. Let's get a few unpleasant realities out of the way first. Let's let's eat our vegetables so we can have dessert.



The Good Old Days Weren't What We Remember



The first thing I want to talk about is the fact that the good old days of the past weren't exactly like we remember them. Don't fool yourself in thinking the "good old days" were any better. In Ecclesiastes 7:10 it says "Do not say, 'why is it that the former days were better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you asked about this."



Let me ask you… Exactly what days in your life were, better than these?



I had a great childhood. I rode my bicycle with my friends. I ate way too much junk food. And I got some great Star Wars toys at Christmas times and birthdays. But you know what? I grew up during the Cold War. I remember hearing about nuclear warheads, nuclear stockpiling the Soviet Union, the KGB, East Germany, families separated at the Berlin Wall and people risking their lives to cross into West Germany, and on and on.



As I grew older, there was aids, recessions, all kinds of world events, terrorism and riots in the news and genocides and wars. Yes, pretty much all of that was far away but closer to home. I grew to have bills to Pay and severed relationships in different trials and struggles.



Often we look back and gloss over the day to day or the really bad stuff. And we still we call them "the good old days". God's word cautions us to keep a proper perspective about the past.



The Present has Always Been Uncertain



The second thing we have to realize, besides just the fact that the good old days of the past weren't exactly like we remember them, is that the present has always been uncertain. Humanly speaking, the only time of certainty that ever existed was eternity past and however long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden before the fall, because after that, the world and everything in it was plunged into chaos.



None of us knows how long we will live. Even driving down the street to the store we're not guaranteed a return trip. I remember many times over my career when my employer at the time was going through layoffs or mergers, or there were long periods of uncertainty about the future. And I'm sure you have your own stories like that you could share.



Remember when Pharaoh asked Jacob how old he was? Do you remember Jacobs reply? In Genesis 47:9, Moses records it for us.