(This post originally appeared in CNS News)
By Alex McFarland
Today I found myself doing something that many might see as mundane, though to me the deed was rather somber. After years of use, it was finally time to discard my 50-foot tape measure. Nothing I could do would make it “reel in” anymore, and managing dozens of feet of ungainly metal tape proved unworkable (though I tried). After carefully placing the tape in my tool bin hundreds of times, today the piles of unwound tape were “decommissioned” and laid in a garbage bin.
It made me stop and think.
The sentimental side of me thought about the many projects through which that measuring device had guided me over a quarter century. Whenever I needed to do something right … well, I wouldn’t trust myself to guess at a measurement. To be accurate, common sense would always whisper, “Get the tape measure.”
Gathering up the pieces of the tape measure for the last time, I stared down at its numbers—inches and “foot” markings. None of them had somehow become inaccurate or no longer valid. And it isn’t that I no longer needed this in my workshop. Here is the situation—the mechanism responsible for supplying me with this measuring stick had failed. The case had cracked open and the coil spring would no longer “roll out” or “retract” the tape so that I could use it. The standard itself was as perfect as ever; the moving parts responsible to provide me with the “ruler” had failed.
You might wonder what all this has to do with anything.
I believe that this little vignette is symbolic of our crumbling nation today. Many troubling indicators could be cited regarding social, moral, financial, spiritual and familial prospects for masses of those aged 30 and under. Discussing such facts is certainly not an indictment of millennials as people. But our nation faces dire days ahead if we don’t honestly acknowledge the realities that are shaping the lives of millennials–and earnestly change course. Continue reading…
