"We will get through this if we truly practice e pluribus unum (out of many, one). However, if we continue to divide on every issue, plus leave God out of the picture, our future will be bleak at best. As for me, I not only want to make it to tomorrow, I also want to make tomorrow a better day than today."
I was at a prayer meeting yesterday morning, and when we started our discussions prior to prayer, the recent events were discussed. The storms, the earthquake, the Las Vegas shooting, the national strife - everyone's plate seemed to be full with topics for prayer. But then the pastor brought up a very good point. What else can we do besides pray? Be a little ray of light in this ever darkening world.
This year has reminded me of that old sick joke, "Cheer up - it could be worse. So I cheered up and it did get worse." Just when you think you are at the bottom of the well, after three major hurricanes and the Mexico City earthquake, we have the worst mass shooting in our country's history. There are times we just want to reach for the heavens and say, "Lord, please help us make it to tomorrow."
But it is one thing to just make it to tomorrow, it quite something else to make tomorrow a better day. An example of this is as follows. As many of us have seen, after yesterday there have been some very toxic posts on social media. The human part of us, after reading some of that garbage, wants to respond by unloading on the person who wrote it. Then that person would unload back. What would be accomplished? Nothing, except making a bad day even worse.
The hardest thing I have had to learn in my faith walk is to verbally turn the other cheek. To let an unkind word go unsaid. To try and live more in the spirit of Ephesians, Chapter 4. How am I doing on that? I am still a work in progress. I fail more than I want to. But it is important to make every day a better day. And it is important to making it to tomorrow.
Are we done with the bad news yet? Are there more natural or un-natural disasters headed our way? I am betting yes. Yesterday, the pastor in the prayer group also said this - wouldn't it be wonderful to have many, many more of these small prayer groups all over the land, just bathing our hurts and needs in prayer? I could not have agreed more.
We will get through this if we truly practice e pluribus unum (out of many, one). However, if we continue to divide on every issue, and then leave God out of the picture, our future will be bleak at best. As for me, I not only want to make it to tomorrow, I also want to make tomorrow a better day than today.
We have a divisive leader, a divisive congress, a divisive electorate, a racially divisive country and a country increasingly divided by age.
ReplyDeleteSo we have two divisive sides to every story, every issue.
Major tragedies used to unite our country, but we have moved past that into very fragmented territory.
Blame it on social media, the huge gap between haves and have-nots, post 45 election fall-out or whatever; we are definitely not on a path to righteousness, for his names sake.
It will test the faith of those that believe if these seemingly endless challenges continue. Or it will bring more to the faith, in search of answers. Will they find them, I hope so.
ps Waiting anxiously to see what giant blunders 45 will make as he opens his unscripted mouth in PR and LV. I wish he would move permanently to one of his golf properties, never to be seen or heard from again.
Letter to the Editor, this mornings St Paul PP
ReplyDeleteAllegiance to our country appears to be low. We are no longer one nation indivisible. We are a nation divided by politics, race, gender and wealth. Countless special interest groups press their agendas in protest. What we have in common with each other no longer matters as much as our differences.
Many leaders, writers and historians have observed that nations can’t be destroyed from the outside until they are destroyed from within. I see this destruction now, as we are surrounded by discord and discontent.
Who you voted for now defines who you are in the minds of many. People are categorized and labeled by political affiliation. Beliefs and values are attributed to you, even when they are not true. People are unfriended on Facebook if they don’t agree with you politically.
We need to get beyond classifying and categorizing people and deal individually with each other and focus on the values, hopes and interests that we share as humans and Americans. We can start by sharing what we have in common with others, be it family, neighborhood or city. By noting what we have in common, we might try to be more understanding of each other’s point of view
If only Stephen Paddock had been a Muslim … If only he had shouted “Allahu akbar” before he opened fire on all those concertgoers in Las Vegas … If only he had been a member of ISIS … If only we had a picture of him posing with a Quran in one hand and his semiautomatic rifle in another …
ReplyDeleteIf all of that had happened, no one would be telling us not to dishonor the victims and “politicize” Paddock’s mass murder by talking about preventive remedies.
No, no, no. Then we know what we’d be doing. We’d be scheduling immediate hearings in Congress about the worst domestic terrorism event since 9/11. Then 45 would be tweeting every hour “I told you so,” as he does minutes after every terror attack in Europe, precisely to immediately politicize them. Then there would be immediate calls for a commission of inquiry to see what new laws we need to put in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Then we’d be “weighing all options” against the country of origin.
But what happens when the country of origin is us?