Sixty years ago.....I know that shocks a lot of you but here might be a surprise....you are not the only ones in America or on the planet....sixty years ago and thereabouts in America the staple for evening viewing on the television was the variety show....Glen Campbell or Andy Williams or Carol Burnett or Sonny and Cher....not to mention Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk. You might be surprised how many different shows there were that were hosted by different celebrities. They were all the same....some good songs and dance routines and comedy skits.
None of the many friends that I grew up with ever went to the beach for a family vacation. The closest was a single aunt who went to Virginia Beach one year. I never saw the ocean until basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the fall of 1969. Today everyone seems to be going to Hawaii or Europe or Alaska or Yellowstone. I thought about doing this post yesterday while on the highway....passing hundreds of cars....as I tried to find what we would call back then....a 'clunker'....but could not see any that might qualify.
The Cuban missile crisis and November 22, 1963 began the change in us.....there's no doubt about that....and then less than three years later that sniper went to the top of that University of Texas tower and began his rampage....and in a phrase that Trump likes to use....'all hell broke loose.' We went from Bobby Vinton....to the Hell's Angels clubbing and knifing a man to death in front of the Rolling Stones at a Woodstock type music festival in California.
Both sides of the political aisle like to use the concept of....the quality of life. That is why we have assisted suicides today. That is how we choose our presidents....'is your life better today than it was four years ago.' If everyone having a smart phone and driving a smart little SUV to the beach every year is data for quality of life....then we would be in good shape....but there is more to it than that.
God's Word tells us....in John 10:10...."The thief comes only to seal and kill and destroy, I [Jesus] came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
Oh I travelled too as the years went on....and my wife and I were woken up many years ago somewhere around midnight in a very nice London hotel....as a small group of revelers below our window were singing....I honestly can't remember any of the words that night other than the famous refrain....but these words are in the lyrics...."Now for ten years we've been on our own....And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone...." Well for ten years now we have been on our own....since Donald Trump came down that golden escalator. Is your life better today than it was that day in June of 2015?
I submit to you that if you have been a Christian since before that day....that you have not been living more abundantly. You have largely forgotten how to love your neighbor....certainly not your neighboring country....and most certainly not the alien in your midst....and your compassion has become a mechanical duty....a soup pantry here...or a check to a Christian relief ministry there. You no longer are worried about anyone's soul....that's God's concern....you are more concerned with their vote. You were no longer panting for Jesus to return....but for Trump to return. We have either been purposely stirred up to hate....(that's us conservatives and evangelicals hating the other side)....or....the other side is driven to hate because that is Trump's main goal in life....to get others to hate him.
We have deceived ourselves by thinking that Trump winning an election....and everyone who didn't agree with us getting fired....is somehow God blessing us. This isn't God's grace....nor is it His peace and love and mercy. We have merely turned the quality of life into as being the winner of one of those caged fighting matches. If only Donald Trump could step into one of those cages and beat the ever-loving you know what out of Anthony Fauci....well that would be heaven on earth.
