I Was Born in the Wrong Era

Have you ever said, “I was born in the wrong century!  I should have been born in the pioneer days/Renaissance/colonial days/Edwardian era/flapper days/etc.”  Everybody seems to have a period in history that’s fascinating to them and they romanticize that time. They place themselves among the characters of “Downton Abbey” or "Lord of the Rings” or “The Little House on the Prairie” or “Game of Thrones.”

But I don’t think anyone is born in the wrong era.  In Acts 17, Paul said that God “made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” (v.26-27)

Maybe I am interpreting this too literally, but it seems to say that God chose when and where we would live.  So we can’t be destined for another time.  But even if He didn’t, when we fantasize about living in another era, I’m pretty sure we generally place ourselves in the shoes of the comfortable, the wealthy, the privileged.  Many a female has probably fantasized about being a Southern belle (at least back in the era when “Gone With the Wind” was so popular).  But how many have fantasized about being one of the slaves on the plantation?  No one has desired that.  Chances are, though, that’s what you would be.  “Southern belles” made up maybe 15% of the population of the antebellum South.  Slaves and poor farm families were a much larger percentage of the population.  

Same with being royalty or aristocracy in European nations.  There’s a much better chance you would have been a pauper or one of the kids in the Industrial Revolution working 16 hour days in a dangerous and filthy factory.  If you’re a female, there’s a good chance you would have died in childbirth, or your child would have.  If you’re a male, there’s a good chance you would have died in war.  

Even if we move into more recent eras, if you would have loved to be a 1920’s flapper, remember that they had a short-lived idyll before the Depression hit.  And nobody romanticizes that era (except one of my kids at 8-years-old who lamented, “I wish I had been around during the Depression – everyone was so resourceful then.”)

We can romanticize any era in history.  We can imagine we would have lived a more exciting, more romantic, happier life.  But I don’t think so.  I think it would have been the same, maybe much worse.  And that’s not the point, is it?  God didn’t put us here for that.  The verse in Acts says God put us where He did so that we would reach out for Him and seek Him.  

Be here.  Be in the present.  And be grateful for this time.  It can be fun to read or watch period or fantasy stories.  And we can immerse ourselves in those worlds for fun.  But don’t stay there.  Live the life God gave you.