Gone with the Wind

I just finished re-reading Gone with the Wind. It truly is an American classic. There are so many elements woven in the midst of the descriptive and masterful story-telling. It captured details of the American Civil War, showing the struggles of the War and of the Reconstruction. It displayed the staunchness of the South. And, it depicted the heart-breaking love story, that didn't have the fairytale "Happily Ever After" ending. I wonder if the book would've first come out in more recent years, would there have been a demand for a sequel? I tend to think that it was a more romantic era back then; and people didn't want to see such a great love dissipate. And so, when the sequel Scarlett was written, it did have the happy fairytale ending. But, in today's culture, I sense more of a cynicism. Bitter tragic endings are more expected; and the shift away from our roots in Judeo-Christian ethics, which formed the foundations of HOPE in our history, has given way to an impersonal scientific evolution point-of-view, which can only offer a cold bleak look at life and the future. While the book mentioned evolution from the perspective of survival-of-the-fittest, still, the virtues like goodness and loyalty were extolled. Yet, with scientific evolution, mutations of cells that have evolved over time by natural processes can't make sense of "intangibles" such as love and goodness and truth. Unless we go back to our roots and recognize the importance of traditional values and strong ethics, based on the existence of a Loving God who created us in His image, there will be even more that will be "gone with the wind." How sad it would be to wake up one day and realize that we've been blind all along. That in trying to do away with our foundations as One Nation UNDER GOD, and trying to erase IN GOD WE TRUST, and trying to tear down the Ten Commandments as the moral basis of the law; we are actually taking away what made this nation great in the first place. We would be undoing what all the founding fathers had built. Will we realize that what our society has been trying to get rid of, is actually the very thing that we most need; and that what we are chasing after will leave us cold and unsatisfied? Scarlett and Rhett lost what they had, because she was chasing after a "dream" she made up. When, she came to the realization of what she really needed, it was too late. I pray that will not happen to this great country of ours. The greatest hope and the strongest foundation is that which is rooted in God.