TRANSITION

"Should I get the tennis balls now?" Mike asked, warily.  It was 1976 and time for the Cruses' new baby to arrive.  As a twice-graduated Lamaze couple (the baby was late and they were forced to go back through the class)...Mike and Susan were fully prepped for the big show.  Mike was armed and ready to play his part.  But instead of a Polaroid moment, Mike found himself facing down a snarling she-wolf, injured and backed into a corner.  "Don't you TOUCH me!" the expectant mother growled.  Mike was encouraged.  He knew the book had said this latter phase would be called "transition".

Am I the only one who thinks our country is in transition?

The future is fuzzy.  All I know is that half of the country is tense, and the other half is filling out the basketball brackets with the President.  OK, maybe he is a cool guy.  But this takes me back to post-high school when you are surprised to find out sometimes the cool people are not really the cool people when they come to the reunion looking like Mickey O'Rourke.  Can't we just buckle down and take our country's plight seriously?

Remember the good old days when Alan Greenspan was the smartest guy in the room?  Whatever happened to Greenspan?  Now we are to believe that all this dollar dilemna blew up on HIS blindside, too?  Who CAN we trust?

I would set my husband up against anyone for the post of Responsibility Czar.  He worked in high school and college, graduated and went to work the next Monday.  He worked a thirty year job, took an additional twenty year career as an Air Force JAG, retired and went back to work, saved well and had the future mapped out for his family.  Mike Cruse plays by the rules.  He managed his money well and the future was secure.  Well, until now.

People with a radical worldview (your money is mine, let's create a perfect world) are actively challenging what has set our country apart from the rest of the world.  Our America is the sweet land of LIBERTY!  Surely your knee didn't jerk with the Congressional knee as they imposed a punitive 90% tax on people who contractually had every right to the bonus money... who months ago were cajoled into staying on their post with the same carrot.  Surely you thought that smelled a bit "brownshirtish"....didn't you?  What leader pits one portion of his country against another? 

My country is in trouble.  No one actually thinks Tim Geitner can steer this ship...or thinks his boss can, either.  Our President is a product of Chicago dirty politics and a racially hate-filled church and a hard scrabble upbringing that didn't find him fitting in anywhere.  How ironic that he is now King of Cool?  Now he has all the control that his out-of-control-early-days yearned for.  We were not allowed during the election to see the connection between his worldview and the one that Bill Ayres holds.  Now it is beginning to seep out and make sense.  If you loved your country and wanted to see it prosper, would you fiddle while Rome burned?  It seems our President is glad for the financial crisis so that people will be occupied while he rams through a new world order.  His administration has repeated more than once that it would be a pity to waste such a crisis.

But what about God?  Where is He in all this?  For whatever His reasons, the Lord has seen fit to remove our traditional fortresses, the things that buttress our confidence.  We can't trust our money.  We can't trust our government.  We can't believe our leaders.  I feel like I've gone down the rabbit hole with Alice.  Someone sure changed the pricetags on things.  Nothing is as it appears.  Where do we turn?  Is there a baseline anywhere?

Nate was here this weekend.  We gave him David and Goliath figures to play with as we read that Bible story.  As we talked about the two, I asked Nate what Goliath had that would protect him.  Nathan pointed to his helmet, his shield, his spear and sword, and his body armor.  Then I asked Nate what was protecting David.  Nathan studied the smaller boyish figure, saw no armor and only a slingshot for a weapon.  The 4.5 year old mind was thinking hard.  Mimi explained..."All David had to protect him was God, who had protected him when he was a lonesome shepherd boy and a bear wanted one of his sheep."  

David knew he could trust God because David had life experience with God and so he leaned back on that confidence called faith.  Believers can stand firm in this transition because we know Someone who never changes... Someone whose sovereignty is not challenged by our dire breaking news...Someone who stands majestically victorious at the end of time.  

"Faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality (faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses)."  Hebrews 11:1