President Obama
Last night was a great evening to be at a Martin Luther King, Jr. banquet.
My friend Jerry Taylor was speaking. The last fifteen minutes of his message were about as inspiring as anything I’ve ever heard. The rafters of the Abilene Civic Center were rising.
But even beyond that, there was the buzz in the air about today’s inauguration. Sadly, one version of Christianity made it sound in the election like one could hardly be a real Christian and vote for Barack Obama. This was a room full of people who were serious Christ-followers who were celebrating his election.
A touching part of the evening was a prayer giving thanks for President Bush and asking God’s blessings on his and his family’s future.
It’s not an enviable time to take over as president. President Obama deserves all our prayers as he leads.
Political affiliations aside, it’s pretty neat to witness something so historical and important to America’s Story.
Lot’s of buzz among the students and faculty at ACU.
I will add President Obama to my daily prayers. I want you to know that I pray for you and Diane everyday too. I pray that the Lord will contine to invigorate your ministry with His passion and I pray God’s richest blessings over your home and your marriage covenant.
“President Obama deserves all our prayers as he leads.”
Amen, Mike.
Richard: Please explain the “buzz among students and faculty at ACU.”
I think that one guy commented on my facebook today!
Liz Peek has just the right take on this day.
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/01/20/peek_obama_depression/
qb
Great day for America! Yeah, it was sad to hear some Christians communicate that you couldn’t vote for Obama if you were a “real” Christian. Equally as sad was to see many Christians condone the the hateful rhetoric towards Bush.
DU
Steve, Sr.,
ACU supported Pres. Obama over Sen. McCain. I would guess the unofficial vote was pretty close, but I’m also guessing more supported Mr. Obama.
Kent F,
The Optimist, not the school, endorsed Obama, and according to my memory, probably faulty, about two thirds of a respondent to a poll planned to vote for McCain, with the remaining third voting for Obama or not planning to vote at all. I couldn’t find the results searching on the Optimist website, however.
AP and KentF, qb has just verified what AP said via the Optimist’s web site. The web links, which I tried to post just now, are currently caught in the swirling abyss known as “comment moderation,” but you can find them with a suitably clever search string.
Meantime, KentF, your “guesses” need a bit of refining. (The campus-wide student vote was NOT close, and it was NOT for Obama.) But that’s not a crime, so carry on!
Cheerio,
qb
‘Sadly, one version of Christianity made it sound in the election like one could hardly be a real Christian and vote for Barack Obama.”
Gee, Mike…I have heard almost the same thing from you, Larry James and others on your site in regards to George W. Bush or Republicans over the past eight years. Oh, sure, you don’t come right out and say it but it can certainly be implied from many of the comments and posts.
I have an idea.
Democrats aren’t christians. Republicans aren’t christians.
Democrats kill babies, and use the force of the government to steal from hardworking, often times charitable and giving people.
Republicans like to lob bombs to solve their problems, killing scores of innocent civilians in the process.
I’m a pretty big fan of Jesus’s political ethic. Why don’t we quit fighting about who is the lesser of two evils, and start just being good. Worked in the first century. Though, you may have to lay down your life to save it. Nah… maybe we should just forget that. Dying rather than killing to protect yourself (or get financial/healthcare/national security) is much much easier. The Israelites begged for a King. Jehovah warned them. History repeats itself, even after Jesus’s resurrection proclaimed that God’s people all ready have a King, the only one they need.
Carry on.
In the midst of all the giddyness that we have elected the first black president–it is forgotten that his election was made a racial issue and that he was elected primarily because of his race and not necesssarily because he was the best candidate for the office. I am glad that we have progressed to where a person’s race does not prevent his or her election to office.
But I am distressed that at all levels candidates are being elected by the ability as an orator and their charisma and not by their qualifications. This problem has been evident ever since the election of President Kennedy.
And I as a christian cannot vote for anyone who is for partial birth abortion much less any form of abortion. Does that mean that I am saying that a Christian who votes for such a one is not a Christian–No-I am saying where my conscience is. Frankly, I csnnot understand how any one [christian or non-christian] who holds life to have value can support the ghastly practice of partial birth abortion–I know some have swallowed the false notion that it is done to save a mother’s life.
Yes, pray for President Obama, Pray that God can change his heart, Pray for our congress and nation or “the tribulation” may be closer than you think!
Republicans like to lob bombs to solve their problems, killing scores of innocent civilians in the process.
Let’s see:
FDR/Truman-WWII-Democrats
Truman-Korea
JFK/LBJ-Vietnam-Democrats
Clinton-Bosnia-Democrat
Obama-??? What will you say when we strike Iran which will likely happen.
This idea that only Republicans seem to get involved in conflicts is naive and disengenous.
Neither political party has clean hands.
No argument from that here. Democrats in the past have been the ones with the more belligerent foreign policy… even into the 90s, republicans stood up against Clinton’s mess in Bosnia, Somolia, Iraq, etc. But times have changed. The Republicans now have the belligerent interventionist foreign policy, and the Democrats, at least in their words, seem to be less belligerent.
Point still remains that if you are pro life, that should include iraqi children as well as aborted babies.
Quite honestly, I’m not sure who the liberal-Christian messiah is anymore…
But I’m just being divisive. Let’s get to the real focus of hope for change. I mean, I love to change for the sake hope – and hope that we can all change to become more hopeful. And to ride unicorns.
This is the kind of comment that I find disturbing about “The One”:
“I would say any one of the Biblical leaders,” said Denzel Washington’s mother, Lennis Washington, who was attending the inauguration with her son on Tuesday. “The apostle Paul, Moses, John the Baptist – any one of them. Seriously, he is like one of those apostles for our day. He came to lead us to the original design of what we are supposed to do on this earth.”
Add to that the sort of presumptuous rhetoric, as in yesterday’s inaugural speech as well as prior to it, that says we’ve never faced tougher challenges than we do today.
(One supposes that even Tom Brokaw – author, you may recall, of _The Greatest Generation_ – might object to that kind of rhetoric. But one would apparently be wrong in supposing so. “In the tank” is a particularly egregious understatement.)
The 300+ electoral votes that put The One behind the teleprompter yesterday appear to be willing to suspend their disbelief and disengage their critical faculties for the sake of some ephemeral notions of “hope” and “change.” We’ll see. Thus far, the form that “The New Era of Responsibility” seems to be taking is merely continuing and enhancing the backstopping of irresponsible behavior, giving voice to the victimization-mongers (despite what yesterday’s “historic” inauguration was alleged to represent in terms of race relations), and putting the resulting financial burden squarely on fewer and fewer people.
The contrast between what we heard yesterday and what Mr. Reagan said in his first inaugural address could not have been more stark, breathless claims of Obama’s “Reaganesque” rhetoric notwithstanding. In that context, the better motto is “Change That We Have No Choice but to Believe Is Taking Place.”
*chuckle*
qb
Always a shame to see a positive and uplifting post twisted into exactly what I would have expected from many. Thanks for the post Dr. Cope.
Hope,
I’m sorry but I refuse to drink the kool-aid until I’m convinced otherwise.
Hope, it’s always a shame when Mike points fingers but never points back at his own posts and blog. The only person twisting things is Mike and his shameless ripping of anything Republican and then standing back and trying to be non-partisan.
QB,
While I’m not a fan of Obama’s speeches from a policy perspective, I do have to tell you that I think he’s right when he says we’ve never faced tougher challenges.
Regardless of what the shaved head financial shrills on CNBC say, we’re headed for economic armegeddon. We’ve lost the investment banks, and the remaining large banks (BAC, CITI) are going to be nationalized in the coming weeks. The large financial institutions in the world are essentially insolvent… and we haven’t even hit the second wave of foreclosures from all the ARM’s that reset from 09-11.
Obama can’t fix it though, so I’m trusting in Jesus to provide… but I am laying by in store, and planning a little bit so I’ll be able to help those in need.
Ya’ll should do the same.
“Never,” t-e-w? NEVER? Not even with Europe overrun by fascists? With shivering, pneumonia-wracked, exhausted soldiers – and the fate of our Declaration’s signatories, and their dreams – hanging by a thread at Valley Forge? With brothers fighting brothers at Antietam? With the Bear on the move in Eastern Europe?
Mercy, our memories are short and our perspectives solipsistic, aren’t they?
It’s not that we don’t face big problems. But we need a renewed sense of proportion.
qb
Roland, what blog have you been reading? Please site examples if you are going to make wild accusations like that.
DU
I still don’t know that I agree with you.
I think the main difference is that we’ve become dependent on a global economy… one that is crumbling.
If all the sudden our banks are gone, food gets a little scarce, we’re gonna have some major problems, because people no longer are able to take care of themselves without the government, and without cheap and easy ways to get food.
When the big economic engine stops running, we’re gonna see difficulties that we don’t know what to do with.
t-e-w, you’ve put your finger squarely on some very important issues that demand and deserve sober-minded and sustained attention. But we’re not hanging by a thread.
With any luck, we’ll take this opportunity to learn that fostering greater and greater dependence on government – which is to say, our fellow citizens, the ones who pay the taxes – is precisely the wrong approach; we must ask more of ourselves, not coerce it out of others via forced redistribution.
(Make no mistake about it: a “refundable tax credit” to people who pay no taxes to begin with is the most cynical kind of euphemism qb can imagine. At least have the guts to call it what it is: Robin Hood government.)
Unfortunately, the new administration is going to try to do precisely the opposite, making more and more people dependent for their livelihood on a smaller and smaller number of taxpayers. TERRIBLE idea for the country; BRILLIANT idea for the political party that makes it happen. When the president says that we’re all going to have to suffer in order to pull out of this mess, he really doesn’t mean all of us…only about half of us, or slightly less if he can figure out how.
Then, when the inevitable recovery obtains, he’ll be able to say it was his policies that made the recovery possible, but the truth will be that the economy recovered in SPITE of those policies. (Just as it was in the 1940s.)
*sigh*
qb