For the "Greatest Generation" it was December 7:  Pearl Harbor.  For many of their offspring--the Baby Boomers--perhaps in addition to November 22, 1963, the assassination of JFK, it is December 8:  the murder of John Lennon in 1980.  An enduring icon to many a Boomer, John Lennon, the former Beatle, was gunned down as he entered his apartment in New York City.  It was a very long night for all of us.
     I've listened to Lennon's classic "Imagine" more times than I can count.  Though I look at it differently than I did on the other side of my embrace of Jesus and Christianity, I still marvel at the simplicity of its vision.  Though I may take issue with "Imagine's" seeming exclusion of the transcendence, I can nonetheless identify with its passion to imagine what I do not now see:  global peace.  While Lennon did not see world peace at the time he wrote the song, he nonetheless longed for it and, it seemed, believed it would one day happen. Similarly, as I understand Christianity's view of the world, I can say that although I do not now see the fullness of that for which around which I construct my life vision, I believe that one day I will.  I believe that one day, a day perhaps decades in the future, I will experience the full measure of God, here and beyond.
     In the end, peace will come.  It will come as a work of human agency and endeavor, undergirded and sustained by the fact and activity of God.  Humanness craves it, God guarantees it.
     Imagine.