Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
We had a couple incidents last week where I work; nothing along the lines of Paris or Mali or Beirut, but a bit unsettling all the same. In one case, a coworker saw a package deposited on a major thoroughfare; an 
investigation turned up nothing dangerous. In the other, a less than focused security guard phoned me to help an unidentified member of the public who entered our building, even though the person would have been turned away at the door if procedures had been followed.
Strange times. But are they stranger than any other times? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
In today’s first reading from Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled and died more than five hundred years before Christ’s birth, has an unsettling dream. Daniel is among those called to interpret the dream and shares with the king a vision in which the Lord’s kingdom trumps all others and lasts forever.
And today, despite terrorist threats and disputes about what our stance on accepting refugees should be and our concerns, justified or not, about our own safety and those we love, that vision remains real. Cults and cells and sects and, yes, even countries may be destroyed. None of them can keep us from God’s promise of the kingdom if we refuse to let fear and hatred creep into our souls. None of them can keep us from God’s promise of the kingdom if we love as He loves, regardless of how unsettling our times may be.
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