Many of us will be glad when this election season is over. I honestly don’t know which is worse: all the text messages and emails I get from this candidate or the other, or the virulent and nasty messages I get from their opponents. In a prior life, I ran for public office, nothing really big, mind you, just for town council and even when the party machine tried to unload me, it was nothing like what I see now.
Even more recently when the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore, the loser accepted the result. As aggravated as I was because my guy lost, I swallowed hard as did Gore, and we and other Americans accepted the result. Now we have people running for office who want to shrink the eligible number of voters so they will win.
We even have Members of Congress paying upwards of $100,000 for security because of gun-toting idiots who threaten to kill them and their families, posting photos of their children on the web along with addresses. We are losing our sense of community, if we haven’t lost it already. It reads like the countries from which people flee. We’ve got to pull together or we will destroy ourselves more than Putin or Xi could ever do.
Prayer for the Day
Troubled, we come to you in a worrying time, O God,
For sometimes it seems, our Nation is unraveling;
Like a ball of yarn unwound apart by kittens,
We only seem to find pieces strewn across the floor.
Merciful God, take us into your arms and hold us together,
And protect us from what could destroy us.
In the name of the One who points the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All. And this latter is never possible without instruments.
- Hannah Arendt, political philosopher (1906-1975)
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
- Abraham Lincoln, President (1809-1865)
You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When people fall, do they not get up again?
If they go astray, do they not turn back? Why, then, has this people turned away?
They have held fast to deceit, they have refused to return.
I have given heed and listened, but they do not speak honestly’
Jeremiah 8: 4-6