Recently I marked a change in my daily prayers: I began to pray for the President Elect after praying for President Obama for eight years. The old order is changing and is giving way to the new. That is the way of a Republic.
I pray for our head of state, because I should.
Why?
I am an American and will stand before God as an American. Every nation, tribe, and people will stand before God and I am American for good and bad. This is my national family, my people, and so I need not justify her evils or cover up her harms. We have been imperfect, but then I am imperfect.
This is home and so I pray my home may be safe and governed wisely and well. Our head of state is the President of the United States of America. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Trump as head of government, the person making policy, he also represents us to the world. As a result, I pray for him.
Mr. Trump needs prayer because his job is so hard and dangerous.
God will not transgress the free will of the President Elect, but God also is balancing what is best for the billions of people on this planet and their own wills. He is bringing what is best given considerations that are cosmic in a cosmos that interlocks.
What blessings would I have placed before Mr. Trump? God will (as He always does) set before our President life and death and Mr. Trump will choose. The choices will be complex and hard to judge except from the divine perspective of the millennia. Trump could reject good gifts, but in submitting to what will be and those things that must be, my prayer is an action to contribute to a positive spiritual climate.
Ideally, my will will become one with the will of God and so create more harmony in this nation. Perhaps if enough of us choose wisely, then our prayers, our harmony with what would be better for our nation, will help persuade President Trump to choose wisely. Perhaps not, but one does what one can, must, and should, and leaves the outcomes to God.
May Mr. Trump have wisdom.
Solomon, son of David, was offered whatever he wished from God and chose wisdom and so blessed himself and his nation. No man can govern well without wisdom and so I pray Mr Trump values wisdom above all things.
May Mr. Trump be safe.
God help us, but at the start of my life one president was murdered, in high school another great president was shot. I have prayed every day for President Obama that God would protect him from the hatred that beset him as our first African-American president. Mr. Trump is hated by many and also faces threats to his safety. I will pray daily that God keep him safe.
May Mr. Trump love people more than programs, politics, or polls.
People are eternal, nations fail. People are immortal, politics are temporal. People are interesting and complicated, with desires and needs that cannot be quantified in simple minded polls.
May Mr. Trump keep his oath to our Constitution, under God.
No nation commands our absolute allegiance, but no human being should put himself over the fundamental laws of the commonwealth. In our case, we swear allegiance to the Constitution and not to a person. The only person to whom we submit is God: one nation, under God. May Trump recognize that he is not Lord, but in the order of America, the Constitution is lord, and in the order of Heaven, Jesus is Lord.
May Mr. Trump be humble before God and the American people.
Proud men risk becoming fools or tyrants. The incompetent are protected by their incompetence and so only become idiots with power. We might survive that as a Republic, but pride in the competent is very dangerous. The proud man pushes himself over the Constitution and God and so becomes dangerous to all of us.
We must pray that in his heart the office humbles Mr. Trump and that he approaches each decision with the knowledge of his limits.
Christians are hopeful people who have seen bad men become great rulers and good men fail. We know that we do not know the future. Many of us did not vote for Trump and many did. Now all of us pray for him: wisdom, safety, love, loyalty, humility.
God save President Obama, President Elect Trump, and our God blessed Republic.
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