Archive for July, 2024
The Lesson of History – Amazing Grace
Summer 1972, Illinois
My beloved Grandpa used to let one or two of his grandkids at a time stay at his house, and during the summer before I entered 7th grade, I was enjoying my coveted turn. At 12 years old, I got to drive his car! We kept that a secret until after his death in 1991. Something else that came back to me recently – Grandpa and I watched the 1972 Democratic National Convention on TV together.
Grandpa was an intelligent, kind, curious, and courageous man. He was a world traveler in a time when it was very unusual. After my grandmother passed away in 1964, he took a job in Germany for two years before retiring. While his son, my uncle, was in Viet Nam flying for the Army during the war, Grandpa went there to visit my cousins and also to go to Asian countries in the region. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what it meant that Grandpa had set foot in places like Laos and Cambodia in the 60’s, and lived to tell about it. He would bring me a doll or figurine from each country in the world he visited, and I have an extraordinary collection of those dolls. I treasure an old passport of his with all the stamps in it. Grandpa witnessed a lot of history in his long life.
Growing up, television was controlled in my family by the adults. We had to get grown-up authorization to turn it on, and then since it was in the family room, whatever was being watched had to be deemed suitable by my parents. We were a family of readers, so it wasn’t like we were clamoring to watch TV. I don’t have a recollection of cartoons other than on Ray Rayner, the long-running WGN children’s show. My younger brother, however, wanted to watch Batman, so the day that program was on (in the afternoon as I recall), then the TV might stay on just until Dad came home from work.
All this background is to highlight the fact that because Grandpa, so wise and interesting, felt it was important to turn on the TV and watch the 1972 DNC, I paid attention. Nonetheless, I was baffled by what was on the screen. Lots of shouting, the speeches, the camera panning from one crowd or speaker to the next, it was really hard to follow. Despite my youth, I was not without bias – DNC to me was shorthand for rioting and lawlessness. Not long after the infamous 1968 DNC in Chicago, I somehow badgered my mother into going downtown to get the new Twist-n-Turn Barbie which was only available there. I still remember the destruction that still confronted us in the Chicago’s Loop, we got the doll and returned home immediately. I will also never forget my father’s reaction when I showed him my new doll and he excoriated my mother for taking me there FOR A DOLL.
Whatever night of the 1972 DNC we were watching, it went on until late at night, and Grandpa didn’t say much, but what he did say (that I remember) was “these people let themselves get carried away by their emotions. They are not thinking anymore, it is like a mob mentality.” Very late at night, Grandpa finally said, okay, that’s enough, and shut off the TV. Then I started 7th grade, Nixon won re-election, I got yet another foster sibling; broke my foot emulating Olga Korbut, the Soviet gymnast in the 1972 Munich Olympics, which were forever marred when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped the Israeli Olympic team, who were all killed during a rescue attempt.
In January 1973, Nixon announced the end of hostilities in Viet Nam; after growing up in Thailand my cousins came back to the United States where inflation was spiraling out of control. As they tried to cope with it, Mom decided to go back to work at a local hospital because she could get health insurance for everyone, even the foster kids, as part of her compensation, and Dad chose a station wagon for his company car.
Over fifty years later in 2024, deja vu. I see politicians talking about solutions that have been tried before, and didn’t work, and wonder why. (C’mon man, you lived through that too! You know that’s not going to fly!) But I also look back over my life and I see how despite our grievous sins and failings, our poor decisions and self-centered actions, through it all, “God works all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28).
Joe Biden has had a long, successful career in public service. The job of President, being the leader of the free world, is a very tough one, and all you need to do it look at the photos of former presidents who entered office at relatively young ages, and what they looked like when they finished their term(s).
At age 81, finally becoming President, Biden has earned the right to be frustrated that he had not achieved his goals. But no one has the right to just issue executive orders against one group of people over others. When the Supreme Court inevitably strikes them down, he rails against the Court, and does whatever he wants anyways. In a speech at HBCU Morehouse College, Biden effectively said to Black Americans, your white countrymen hate you. This wasn’t some well-meaning gaffe that Joe Biden is famous for – someone wrote this speech, and he delivered it in all of its bitter, divisive, false invective.
This is not certainly Joe Biden at his best, and this is not even the Joe Biden we saw at the beginning of his presidency. The day after the debate, such as it was, that Biden haw called for with Donald Trump, the President was at a campaign rally, and he seemed ‘better’. But. When you are President, you can’t have a bad day. Our enemies, without and within, are resurgent and if they see the government and our social fabric as weak, we are in danger. Today, July 11th, 2024, speaking after the NATO summit, President Biden mixed up Ukraine’s Zelenskyy and Russia’s Putin, to gasps from the assembled press, and his own Vice President with Donald Trump. Enough.
I do not want to see Donald Trump become President either. I realized I still have the capacity to be stunned when Trump’s second ex-wife, Marla Maples, said she’d happily serve as his Vice President. (Marla Maples?) Perhaps it was Russian disinformation? But given the grotesquely unqualified family members he had running the country the last time, she may indeed have a shot.
God help us!
It is at times like these when I am reminded the job of a Christian is to pray. Not to lean on our own understanding, but to seek God’s will in His Word. The Holy Scriptures, and the Word made flesh, Christ our Lord. Not to trust our feelings above all things, but to put our faith in our Creator and Redeemer first. To use the gifts of rational thought to align our words and actions with God’s will, and to put our God-given emotions in their proper place. We can be angry and not sin. We can be sorrowful and yet purposeful and hopeful.
“Through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come. T’was grace that brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home.” As dark as things seem, God is in control. That is a difficult truth to hear and absorb when it feels like we are surrounded by evil. But it is the truth.
Purls Before Swine 