in the clear light of day

We’re going to the pancake barn in a minute as a peace offering to our poor children. They have suffered much in these tempestuous political times, having been made to watch the news and  listen to us chatter and generally be sucked into a morasse of Idiocy. They deserve a pancake.

As for me, I am extraordinary relieved that the whole wretched thing is over. As I finally voted on my third try yesterday (First Time: Doddering Old Ladies couldn’t cope with not finding my name in the book and sent me somewhere else. Second Time: Man with enormous mustache tells me “There’s no way in hell you’re voting here today.” Third Time: “Doddering Old Ladies let me cast a paper ballot that probably won’t be counted.) rather than feeling a flood of gratitude for our Great Democracy I was filled with a profound sense of Doom. And, of course, that carried itself well into the night.

Apart from the ongoing horror of abortion and my great great worries about the “foriegn policy” of the last few months, my biggest sense of grief is first hand, on the ground knowledge, that the more a government “gives away”, the more it takes of the person. The more a government meagerly and miserly doles out to us poor wretches, the less room in the human heart for the majesty, risk, terror and love of God. The more we look to Man, the less we need God. This has real life applications for the local church as we struggle to spread the gospel. The State has won in a real and pracitcal sense the battle for the human soul. Our work here in Upstate NY, already an upward climb, I expect to become darker and more difficult.

And yet, as many have noted, God is soveriegn, Jesus sits gloriously on his throne, and he will bring everything about for his own glory. And so, we are going out for pancakes. And we’re turning off the news in repentance for having turned it on in the first place. And we’re going to set our eyes toward the high hills, the narrow way, the cool mountain air, going deeper in and further up to know the One in whom, one day, All will be All in All.