RALLY ROUND THE FLAG

Can you count the folks who went to Washington, D.C. on 8/28 for the Restoring Honor rally? It was a big ole bunch of tiny specks.

There have been a lot of words written about the rally. Pundits can't figure out how to assess such a turnout. They think it is Beck. Maybe.

His influence was the impetus that "turned em out". And people were grateful to him for putting it together.

The media think he's a nutcase. So what does that make his audience? No wonder they're having trouble figuring it out.

(Note: this is Glenn and Dr. Alveda King praying before the rally. She is Martin Luther King's niece; Dr. King also spoke at the rally.)

Here's what the experts aren't "getting"...

These people watch Glenn Beck's tv show. They "went to school" on his knowledge and zeal for our country's founding. It affirmed in their innermost being some things:

1. America is and has been greatly blessed. No other country on earth affords the liberty and promise that can be found here. God's people have always known that, but as Beck opened the history books and showed providence after providence...a fountain of gratitude to God was opened.

2. Our unique founding is a blessing with a responsibility. People realize that our gift of liberty is being chipped away daily. Americans are regular people with jobs and carpools and deadlines and meetings. It takes quite a bit to turn regular people with daytimers out into the streets. But they've hit the pavement now.

At the rally the participants were surrounded by examples of courageous stewardship in the presence of Lincoln and Washington and the memorials to the war dead. Whether they died in their bed or at the theatre or on foreign soil, these heroes gave their lives for their country.

The reason for the rally attendance may be that one day believers will look the Lord full in the face, and they will be sheepish about they handled their stewardship of His awesome gift of liberty.

3. America's uniqueness is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation. We know that God guided the men as they put their thoughts on paper as to how this great experiment might be accomplished.

Since then, the legislative/judicial/executive branches have been pulled and tugged on, manipulated and bloated and perverted. It doesn't work as well as it used to, but we think (in decorator terms) "the bones are there".

The people who went to the rally prayed. The wannabes who wanted to go to the rally but couldn't...prayed. So there must have been some great prayer cover over the event. I wonder what that scene looked like from heaven's side. ElRoi, the God who sees, likes it when we ask. So we've asked. Now we await His answer...

Meantime, the question of whether Beck is the "svengali of shtick" that spooks the media...remains unanswered.

Perhaps Glenn Beck is just the cohesive flame, the willing spark that ignited the populace.

I'm sure wishing that an evangelical had stepped forward to carry the banner. That's not the way things worked. A Mormon is the messenger and I don't know what to do with that.

Glenn Beck and I stand on equal ground as being made in God's image. He and I are equally given the free will to respond to God. And we've made differing choices that put us in different places.

I'm puzzled about all this. I love to listen to him because of his humor. He has that "ah shucks" boyish charm that just tickles me. I love how he stood up front at the rally and called people back to God. I love that he actually called for God's people to step up to the tithe in their local church. (THAT doesn't happen everyday.) I love that he loves his country so unabashedly. I love how he talks about his wife and children...how honestly he deals with who he "has been"...and how quickly he is moved to tears. It's easy to see the change in his life and I hear him give God credit for that change. I want VERY MUCH to think we are on the same page. I'm glad I'm not in charge of figuring out the sheep/goats thing.

So I'll hover and wait...with my antennae up for red flags. But I love ya, Glenn Beck! I'll continue to watch your program because I can learn so much about history and government.

If the Beckmeister turns a 180 and begins to run for President, I'll have to reconsider the svengali charge. Meantime, I take him at his word that he has no interest in that office.

And I'll be grateful for two collections. I like it that the rally raised $5.5 million for the Special Operations Wounded Warriors Project to send hero's kids to college. And I'm very grateful for the way Beck has collected our national thoughts and directed them toward God.

The Lord bless you, Glenn Beck.

OUR THIRTY-FIRST PRESIDENT

What do you think of when someone says President Herbert Hoover? Well, I didn't think so much because I didn't know so much. His name has always been attached to either the Depression or Hoover Dam. How exciting is that? But our recent trip to President Hoover's Presidential Library left me with some great impressions about him that I'd love to share.

Herbert Hoover was born in the small Iowa town of West Branch, a Quaker community. He spoke highly of his childhood and the first six years were carefree as he learned to know the fishing streams and developed his love of rocks.

Life took a serious turn for "Bertie" when he was 6 and pneumonia took his daddy. His mother became a Quaker minister to provide, but she died of typhoid fever when the president was 9. Bertie and his older brother and younger sister had to be split up to live with relatives. Mr. Hoover ended up being sent to Oregon on a train to live with an uncle. He traveled by himself and he was 11 years old. Imagine the relatives sewing two dimes into his coat so that he could buy food along the way.

Bertie Hoover's circumstances improved. His guardian uncle worked for a new college called Stanford where Bert worked to pay his way through school. Both the President and his older brother Theodore graduated with geology degrees from Stanford. College was also where he met the love of his life, Miss Lou Henry. After graduation, Mr. Hoover was hired as a mining engineer. He grew the mustache to look old enough for the position. The company sent him to Australia and he made them so much money, the company offered him a job in China for $10,000 a year. That was pretty good for 1899 and so he immediately cabled a proposal to Lou and she sent a one-word-answer back to him: "yes".

Miss Lou was the first woman in the geology program at Stanford. They met and realized that they had rocks and Iowa and fishing and camping in common. Lou had been born in Iowa, but she was raised in California. Her daddy was a banker who thought he was getting a boy (hence her name) and he gave her a love for the outdoors and taught her to fish and to camp. Described as "robust", she brought her adventurous spirit into their marriage. They married in 1899 and left for China the next day.

They loved their time in China...except for the part about the Boxer Rebellion. They were caught up in the seige of Tientsin and the American compound was under heavy gunfire for a month. Check out Miss Lou's fearless stance with her hand on her hip. They said she would daily sweep the porch to clear away the shell casings.

Miss Lou was already fluent in Latin (translating a geology book that still is in publication). She and her new husband both learned Chinese and even when they were in the White House, if they wanted to communicate just between themselves, they spoke Chinese. She was "Loo" and he was "Hoo".

During his career as a mining engineer, the Hoovers traveled the world and took their two boys with them. I loved one picture of her on a steamship deck with one of the boys as a toddler. She had devised a harness with a leash that she tied to the ship. She was determined her little one would not fall overboard. They lived in London and many places around the globe as his career flourished and they became millionaires.

But when WW1 broke out, Mr. Hoover left business to serve his country. There were 120,000 Americans who were stuck in Europe at the onset of war and HH was charged to organize their return. He always used volunteers, noting "Every time the government is forced to act, we lose something in self-reliance, character, and initiative."

As WW1 progressed, Belgians were starving and Mr. Hoover coordinated relief efforts. Then, when America entered the war, he encouraged people in this country to avoid eating particular foods to save them for soldiers' rations. "Hooverizing" was a term for meatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays.

When the Mississippi River overflowed in 1927, people asked for HH to organize relief efforts. He also served for Presidents Harding and Coolidge as Commerce Secretary. His name was a household name. When he ran for President, he was so loved that he won 60% of the vote. Seven months later, the Depression hit. His policies did not move the country as fast as they would have liked, and he lost to Roosevelt in the next election.

I had no idea what a humanitarian Herbert Hoover was. After WW2 he was back in Europe again. President Truman asked him to coordinate relief to the starving people there. The Presidential Library has a collection of things that people from all over the world have sent him in gratitude. Women took the flour sacks they received and embroidered them and sent them back to him. Children would write him poems. There is a map of the world with sheaves of wheat on each country that he served. There are 57 sheaves of wheat! I watched a video of American immigrants who had lived through the hardships of the war as children. Their testimonies were so moving. One older man with a heavy Russian accent explained through tears that he lived in an orphanage that gave only dark, moldy bread. One day he saw Mr. Hoover come with relief supplies and smelled "white bread" for the first time. Clearly, Herbert Hoover understood how an orphan felt.

I especially loved reading about the relationship between Hoo and Loo. Miss Lou married a very shy man who did not like publicity. His Quaker upbringing caused him to keep his feelings close to the vest. The public may have misread that as being "aloof". But she understood his need to be alone and together they camped and fished and enjoyed family. While they were in the White House they bought a tract of land in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia at the headwaters of the Rapidian River. They built cabins and spent time trout fishing together. When he left office they gave it to the country for successive presidents.

Herbert Hoover earned a lot of money and he gave lots of it away. He served his country without taking any pay for all those humanitarian efforts he organized; the government required that he take a salary, but he used it creatively. "I made up my mind when I entered public life that I would not make it possible for anyone ever to say that I had sought public office for the money there was in it. I therefore kept the money that came to me as salary in a separate account and distributed it where I thought it would do the most good. Part of it went to supplement the salaries of men who worked under me and whom the government paid less than I thought they were worth. Part of it went to charities."

This president was devoted to international service, wrote numerous books, and showed his heart for children by helping to organize Boys Clubs and co-founding UNICEF and CARE. He put his time and money to good use. Isn't that what true religion does? What a fine man!

I tried to think what it would be like if my life had been spent in efforts to help others...and I didn't take money for my service...and then I ended up losing my good name. How painful that must have been! The next time someone uses "Hoover" as a negative adjective, I will wince.

In the last blog, I wrote about how the Lord provides for us in our leaders. That brought to mind a time when President Hoover was a toddler. He was very sick with pneumonia...so sick that the extended family was called in to pray over him. They thought he had died and even took him to the kitchen table to lay him out and put two coins on his eyes. Then someone noticed his chest move up and down a bit. His Quaker grandmother exclaimed that God had saved Bertie Hoover for a special purpose. I don't know what you think, but I think his grandmother was right.

He was the picture of American opportunity: little Bertie Hoover, an orphan from rural Iowa...and Herbert Clark Hoover, the thirty-first President of the United States. I love this quote framed over the door of his Library...

"I have had every honor to which any man could aspire. There is no place on the whole earth except here in America where all the sons of man have this chance in life...Here alone are the open windows through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit. Here alone is human dignity not a dream, but an accomplishment. Perhaps it is not perfect, but it is more full in realization here than any other place in the world."

P.S. If you have ever watched a segment on Fox News called "Culture Warriors", there is a contributor named Margaret Hoover who is the president's great-granddaughter. She narrates a great twelve-minute video that can be found at

http://hoover.archives.gov/

Just scroll down to the bottom center to click on the video.

NEWBORNS AND PRESIDENTS

Do you know much about Walt Disney? Me, either. But it's a good guess that Mr. Walt must have been a total kid-at-heart. All we have to do to know him is to look at the things his creativity brought to life. Wonder how many, many little eyes have grown wide over what Walt Disney imagined. That's a delightful legacy.

In the same way, we can know about God from the things He has made. We can stand at the Grand Canyon rim and fall back at the majesty. We can feel a baby's skin and know even the plushest velvet cannot be so gentle. We hear thunder and respectfully apprehend might and

power. The Lord is seen in the world He made.

Mike and I just came home from a two week road trip to the northeast. Our appreciation for creation increased as we drank in our country's many visuals. We loved the perfect patchwork symmetry of the cornfields in Iowa and the lush green mountains of Pennsylvania. But New York City was our target.

We had a "meet and greet" in NYC with our newest little grandgirl, Lily. And we kept her two sisters for a couple of nights while Brad and Laura moved apartments. Of course, we think Lily and Hanna and Caroline are some of the Creator's finest work. But God is also a

Provider...

Stopping at three presidential libraries as we made our way north, we learned about a trio of

back-to-back presidents whose terms took us through the Depression and WW2.

We stopped overnight in Independence, Missouri to learn about Harry Truman, then stopped in a tiny town in Iowa (West Branch) to learn surprising new things about Herbert Hoover, and we stopped beside the Hudson River in New York state to check out the New Dealer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We were struck with these leaders' differences and similarities. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt had an equal and intense dislike for one another. Democrat Harry Truman was fond of Republican Hoover and called on him to help in the Truman administration. They each had differing means. Truman was born to a struggling farmer, Hoover was an orphan raised by relatives who later was a self-made millionaire, and Roosevelt was born with a family tree full of dollars. They all had an Achilles heel. Hoover lost his good name because of the Depression...polio left Roosevelt with a major physical liability in his prime (age 39)...and Truman strained all his married life for the respect of his beloved Bess.

But at the end of the day, these men all worked diligently and served their country to the best of their ability. We may disagree with a particular decision made, but no one would doubt the hearts of these men to want America's best.

That made me think of government's purpose. Isn't government to be authority/structure around our lives to protect us and provide for the common good? When Mike and I considered these three Presidents, we see that the Lord gave us men equal to the times. They were willing and available men who became uncommon leaders to steer our country through peril.

In the end, their governance allowed us to live the "quiet and peaceable lives" that the Bible talks about. In 1Timothy 2 we are told to "pray for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

I read that to say...God would have us pray for our leaders so that in the safety their authority provides, our lives could be lived vertically (in godliness) and horizontally (in dignity toward others) so the gospel would have opportunity to flourish and many would come to faith.

Times were desperate when Presidents Hoover/Roosevelt devised strategies to get us out of joblessness and starvation. Times were desperate when President Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bomb and save American lives. Now here we are today in another cycle of desperate times and we LONG for sound governance. The latest Rasmussen poll indicates a -17 presidential approval index for President Obama. In fact, more than 20% of the people now think he is a Muslim. If that were true, would it be important?

God will do what He purposes. When I look back at the examples left for us in Scripture, I find examples of how God used pagan kings as instruments of His justice when He spanked Israel. Sometimes the pagans cooperated; sometimes God overruled.

Consider King Cyrus, the Persian king who in 546BC ruled the largest empire the world had ever known. The Bible talked of Cyrus 150 years before his birth. In chapter 44.28 of Isaiah, he wrote that a king named Cyrus would allow captive Israel to come back to her native land and rebuild her temple. And that is what history records. How amazing is that? (see also Ezra 1.1)

Then there's a verse in Daniel where God calls Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar "my servant". Ancient Babylon set the "wicked" standard for their day...and the King of Babylon was God's SERVANT? Yep. That is because nothing is too hard for God. King Neb did serve God, but not until he was brought to his knees.

You may also remember the story of how the Lord used Baalam's donkey to accomplish His purposes. God can use anything. So maybe we should quit worrying about whether a Muslim is in the White House. Our leader can be His instrument regardless of the leader's puny plans or the leader's cooperation.

We need to be appealing directly to God to intervene, rather than fretting about mere man. Remember that Scripture says the kings heart is in God's hand and He turns it wherever He wants (Proverbs 21.1).

But as I write this, isn't the real problem becoming obvious? Why would God want to rescue us? America was established uniquely in the world as a refuge for people to worship God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfEdJNn15E

But we have forgotten why we were founded. We have poked God in the eye over and over and insisted He wait outside while we live as we please. And now we're beginning to realize that we just might need His help. Hmm, this is familiar. Isn't that exactly what happened to Israel?

Let's pray without ceasing for God to save us from ourselves. The quiet and peaceable life that we all desire is found in Him.

A WHOLE LOTTA TOLERATIN' GOIN' ON

American citizens are grateful for the freedom that we enjoy in our country. We take pride in our inclusiveness. We prize tolerance. There is nowhere on earth that is structured like our republic with intentional liberty and justice for all.

But tolerance is not double jointed. It can bend over just so far, then it loses it's balance. Consider an instance when our tolerance has been used against us...the building of a mosque at Ground Zero.

Let's start by pretending the cause is kosher. What does the imam say? He SAYS the purpose of the mosque is to heal. That is not happening. How much healing has the thought of the mosque afforded? If the imam purposed to bring healing, wouldn't it seem rational to provide space that included a place of worship of all faiths? All faiths died that day. At the very least, couldn't a reasonable compromise be that it be built somewhere farther from hallowed ground?

You know neither of these prospects will see the light of day. Certainly an inclusive community center won't happen. Can you see an Islamic leader building something that included a Jewish temple and a Christian church? Now we are getting to the problem. They want to milk our tolerance, but there is no reciprocal slack that exists in their theology. In fact, if a person adheres to the tenants of their faith, their book calls for either submission or death. So much for multiculturalism. The only slack Muslims catch is a weird permission slip granted to "lie" or "pose" in order for them to be able to accomplish their ultimate goal. Extremists even see the death of Muslims secondary to accomplishing their goal. Where is regard for life? The enemy comes to kill and steal our way of life.

Some Americans can't abide with those observations. They can't wrap their minds around a belief system whose goal over thousands of years has been "Allah or the sword". They have trouble looking back at the history books and seeing Islam's pattern. They can't believe evil exists to that degree. So when a Muslim doc at Ft. Hood goes off and kills thirteen, the naive in America wonder if maybe we were as neighborly as we needed to be. Did someone call him names? If we had been better to him, he would have loved us. It doesn't dawn on them that the shooter prepared for that day for years. According to his lifebook, he went out in "glory".

There is a piece on this website about Islamic history called "Wanted: Context" (April, 2009). Last night on the news there was another report about home-grown terrorists...those Americans who actually choose to go across the world to learn to kill their fellow countrymen. Can we just consider raising our heads above the fray and see this eternal struggle coming full circle before our eyes? We need to be wise; we are sheep among wolves.

The proposed mosque has been branded The Cordoba Mosque. There was a Caliphate of Cordoba who ruled a golden period of Islam on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain). Muslims are very proud of that period because according to Wiki there was "remarkable success in trade and culture". What a coincidence! We would have a mosque overlooking the Islamic terrorists' wound to the center of trade and culture of the Western world.

And who is in favor of this mosque? Not the people. Not Americans or even New Yorkers. The people in favor of the mosque are the ruling class, liberals like the mayor. How ironic! The same people who will be among the Jihadists' first victims (the leftists, the ruling class, the godless) are running interference for them.

Toleration is not always a virtue.

Postscript from an article by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury:

"Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is planning the Islamic Community Center and mosque near Ground Zero, says his critics are bigots, and that the project will stamp out terrorism -- not fan the flames: 'We condemn terrorists', said Rauf, who is leading the charge to build the Cordoba House, as it is called. 'We recognize it exists in our faith, but we are committed to eradicate it. We want to rebuild this community. This is about moderate Muslims who intend to be and want to be part of the solution.'

However, Rauf is also on record telling CNN, right after the 9/11 attacks, 'U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We [the U.S.] have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.' "