When your home has been destroyed and the city lay in ruins, starting over doesn’t happen so easily. Imagine a French family living in one of the many towns utterly destroyed by the allied bombings of World War II. How do you move on when every building on the street has been bombed out, shattered bricks spilling out onto the roads, rooms exposed on three sides because their walls were blown apart? Is it even feasible or compassionate to suggest starting over at that point? Or think of the people in Iraq who desire to move past the tribal wars and historical blood feuds that have destroyed their homes for years. It’s hard to move past all of that and start over.

Moving away from the desolation of life to something better can seem like a monumental task. When we have been torn up by sin, when the foundation of our life has been blown apart by guilt and the consequences of our sin, it seems unimaginable to move away from all that pain. Each year we ask young men and women to pledge before God and Church that, what? That they will run away at the first sign of difficulty? That they will run for cover when someone challenges their faith? No, they pledge that they would rather die than give up their faith. 1 Timothy 6:12 puts it this way, “Fight the good fight of faith.”

It is a fight. Being a child of God is a fight. So how do we move on from the rubble of our sin? How do we carry the light of God’s promise into the darkness of this world? We take God’s word, we take his promises, and we move on.

As humanity on the dawn of its second age moved away from their rebellion at the Tower of Babel, so we move away from our own “babels.” We move away with the LORD’s forgiving presence leaving behind our sinful pride. And as we move away from that we head into our futures with the LORD’s faithfulness.

Genesis 11:8, "So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city."