What Doesn’t Fall Apart

Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

It’s ironic that in “The Second Coming,” W.B. Yeats, who considered himself more mystic than Christian (and no fan of Catholicism specifically), used images from the Book of Revelation as metaphor for post-World War I Europe:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…

Things were falling apart, certainly, in 1919 as Yeats wrote the poem: Germany came out of the Treaty of Versailles weakened, some thought permanently. The former tsar of Russia and his entire family had been executed. The once-powerful Austria-Hungary monarchy was no more. The Irish Republic had asserted its independence from the United Kingdom.

The center did not hold; Europe would look far different in twenty years, still different in thirty years, and more different still today.

In the same way, we all change, physically, mentally, emotionally, all the time. Relationships begin and end. People are born and people die. We grow in wisdom or through illness lose our ability to reason or remember. We temper our hard-line opinions based on our life experiences… or perhaps become more intractable as a result.

One center will hold. One thing will not fall apart, try as the world might. Paul puts it this way in Colossians:

(Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. … He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

 May we give thanks and praise for that gift, and take comfort in it.

By Eva Watson-Schütze [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons