Happy Thanksgiving!

Kathryn in November

photos by LTS

Post-Election Thoughts

and hope are offered here and here. My thoughts? God is sovereign and he rules and reigns over the affairs of men. He raises the nations, he tears them down. We may be subject to our new leader, but he is still subject to God, whether he knows it or not. It's been interesting to be a witness to history. This is something that will be told and wondered at for years to come. I only wish such a moment could have been made with a conservative leader. But it is done, the story is not over yet, and we don't know what God has in store for this nation. My greatest hope is that the church will wake up and begin to do the job it should have done long ago: aiding the helpless, poor, and weak. We left them to the well-meaning-but-hopelessly-inadequate mercy of government welfare programs and then we wondered why low-income citizens placed more hope in the government than they ever did in the church. For all the failings of various government welfare programs, they did do one thing the church didn't: offer help to hurting people. It is our failing we should heartily repent of. Had we shown people mercy and hope, had we ourselves implemented programs, then social compassion and mercy could, potentially, have been the church's powerful testimony to an unsaved world. As it is now, we have failed to show the love of God when he had shown us his greatest love and mercy. Our eyes having been opened, we should have lived out the compassion we had ourselves received.

One last thought: history alone will show the kind of leader President George W. Bush has been. For 8 years he lead this country, right or wrong, and he deserves our respect, which is being held from him by the very people who once believed enough in him to elect him twice. In the middle of media-influenced vitriol and spite towards the President, this tribute by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer stands out as a testament to a leader who never backed down on something once he was convinced it was right. He begins:
I’ll miss President Bush’s moral clarity. The president’s critics hated his willingness to label things right or wrong, and the press used to bang me around for it, but history will show how right he was.

Shortly after 9/11, the president gave a speech in which he talked about the fight between good and evil, and that good would win. Afterward, I told him I thought he was being simplistic: “There are a lot of shades of gray in this war. I think it’s more nuanced.”

He looked at me and said, “If this isn’t good versus evil, what is?”

Then he reminded me that when Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, he called on Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” — not to put a gate in it or to remove some bricks. Mr. Reagan said to tear it all down.

Mr. Bush saw the presidency as the place to call the American people to big challenges — in morally clear terms. As his spokesman, I knew that many people would be uncomfortable with how easily he made such moral judgments. I also knew that many Americans welcomed his tough, direct and unambiguous moral clarity.

I’ll miss that direct talk. In the age of terrorism, the one thing we have to fear more than anything is moral relativism.
Read the rest here.

Finally, Campaign '08 Ends

Election day is nearly over (yes, I voted today!) and at long last we can breathe a sigh of relief to know that whatever the outcome tonight, tomorrow America can move on. Now that you've voted, I think it's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy some election day humor while the ballots are counted. Here, here, and here are good places to start.

Happy Election Day!