The change we need most

Usually I turn the TV off during the day; lately, however, the presidential race has snagged my attention.  The bottom line we all forget is that God chooses our President, and God’s reasons are usually beyond our ken.  Once a President is elected, he will have to govern.  If, as seems likely, there is a Democrat majority in the House and Senate, legislating will be easy.

Legislating wisely will defy the wisdom of Solomon.

Democrats will be tempted to enact all the laws the Republicans have kept them from enacting.  But what they need to do is to seek for a bipartisan coalition, the goal of which is the welfare of the country.  Statesmanship and bipartisan cooperation have been extinct on Capitol Hill in recent years.

Just because Al Qaeda has not been successful bombing another target in the United States doesn’t mean that we are no longer in its cross hairs.  Rather, we need to think of ourselves as facing an enemy, which can take any number of forms: financial, military, diplomatic, religious.

A Democratic sweep of the 2008 elections will be meaningless, if those swept into office, undergo the same kind of sea change that affected the young idealistic Republicans of 1994.  They brought little change in the long run.

I confess: I am a liberal Democrat; even worse, a liberal liberal Democrat.  The word comes from Latin, meaning free.  I’m not an advocate of the old post-millennial doctrine of progress.  I agree with CS Lewis who said, “We’ve seen it all in an egg— it’s called going bad in Narnia.”

I also believe that prayer is more important than most other things we’ll try to fix the fix we’re in.  I think of myself as a kind of anchorite.  Since God has limited my mobility, I have chosen to make this armchair a place of prayer.  I hope through reading to recover ancient and medieval perspectives on prayer that have been lost.

We need a President who is “a transformational figure” (General Colin Powell).  Barack Obama is such a man.  I pray we will let him lead us to a new kind of America, an America whose chief export is not dollars (as now), but the ideals of equality among all people, equality of opportunity, and freedom for all.

But, what will change the world is not one leader, no matter how dynamic.  What will change the world is “7000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal,” 7000 who pray to the Lord God Almighty (known perhaps by other names), 7000 who pray without ceasing.