Why are we so horrified our duly elected President undoes what his predecessor did? That’s the platform on which he – or, one day SHE – ran! Now some of my friends are absolutely horrified that Mr. Biden is doing what he said he would do if he were elected President.

They sound like other friends who sang the same chorus when Mr. Trump took office . . . and when Mr. Obama and Mister(s) Bush and Clinton, and so on, enjoyed their first day in their duly elected positions.

Will Rogers observed, “The short memories of the American voters
is what keeps our politicians in office.”

Elections mean change . . . or change back.

But the past four years, we had change on steroids: an intensification of the divisions in our nation and disappointments in the church.

Revved up by social media, we are able to point out everyone else’s character defects, dig up dirt, and expose the hypocrites faster than we can understand the circumstances in which people fail to do the right thing.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly, and applying unsuitable remedies. ~Ernest Benn, c. 1930

We Should Be Horrified!

Worried about Current Events?

But, we aren’t hopeless! How much we need the words from a new young Poet Laureate:

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it . . . Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem

How Do We Repair Ourselves?

1. Don’t Be So Horrified
   Part of my job description is to be wall repairer . . . No, not a builder of walls; but a repairer of breaches – in the church first. (Isaiah 58:3)
2. Re and reread Nehemiah; that can be as helpful as reading Daniel was over the past four years to understand mercurial rulers like Nebuchadnezzar.(A Lunch That Shut My Mouth)

What can I do to repair America’s breaches?

1. Spend more time in Jeremiah . . . and Lamentations than on Social Media. (This is really hard for me!)
2. Assume you are Wrong!
   We need to learn better how to coexist humbly and teachably. . .We should enter every dispute confident there will be something for us to learn, something to confess, or something we didn’t know as we ought to have known it. . . .  [E]ach disagreement can be either a “battle of messages” or a “learning conversation.”(Tim Shorey)
3. Reconsider recent history, and what FDR meant when he spoke of The Four Freedoms, and remember a time when we were more grateful for our freedoms than angry about our government.
4. Be slow to complain; be slower to call everything a conspiracy!

Repeating myself:

Losses that Should Horrify Americans