The Day After Inauguration Day

Inauguration Day 2009.

Eventful, to say the least. Moving. Heartfelt. Tears of pride misted over my eyes as I watched this momentous happening. A man, a common black man descended from an African father is president of this nation, this great nation. That is telling. It is still a land where freedom rings and hope reigns and dreams come true. These ideals continue to thrill every true American. Stirring, truly stirring, swelling the heart within every patriotic bosom. Only in America, my dear America.

Rick Warren's prayer focused us, if we cared to listen, on God. He is our true and constant hope. It isn't a man, it isn't a governmental paradigm, it isn't a nation. Our hope is God -- Him alone. To that I will choose to cling.

Choose, I say -- for as the day's happenings unfolded the warm emotions deceived. "This doesn't seem too bad. Maybe it will be alright. It is good to see such a charming family. (So Fred Astairesque, is he not?...and Michelle always looking suitable for Vogue fashion covers -- you all know how I love that stuff...) How good they look up there, representing such incredible breakthrough on that podium. So I didn't care for the closing prayer...what of it?"

But here we are. This morning reality sets in and I am reminded that business begins in earnest.

Tomorrow, no doubt, Obama will sign some papers putting the United States firmly behind international abortion efforts again, and will begin the work of enacting a massively wasteful spending bill, and our politics will begin again to take up the great arguments that have long given it shape: about the proper relationship of the state and the citizen, about America’s place in the world, about the regard and protection owed to every human life, about how we might best reconcile economic prosperity and cultural vitality, national security and moral authority, freedom and virtue. These are divisive questions of enormous consequence, and they are neither petty nor childish.
The Inauguration by Yuval Levin

I am sobered as I spend my quiet moments in prayer. My eyes fill with tears, but not warm fuzzy tears. I weep for my nation, for the sin we will promulgate, for our refusal to honor God in deed as well as word. My heart is grieved as I recall the words to a song my daughter sings:

"If life is, oh, so beautiful,
Why do we outcast all the young?
If life is, oh, so beautiful,

Why do we condemn them for what we've done?"

We like to kid ourselves. In actual fact, we have become self-deceived.

We are not understanding liberty for all any longer. Liberty for all -- a lofty notion, a demanding principle. That kind of passion begins with God-sized caring.

We are more concerned with economics than issues of life. We worry more about the funding for excessive programs than the unwarranted death of millions of innocent lives -- lives no longer innocent before proven guilty, but condemned to the death penalty.

This is the day of real beginning. I pray for this president, this administration, this nation, these people of America. May we be known as God-seekers, Christ-bearers, and leaders in righteousness. Amen.