Of Elections and Beasts

Text: Daniel 7

In three days, we will finally experience blessed relief from the unending phone calls, mailings, and advertisements telling us about how dire the other candidate would be and how idyllic this candidate will be if elected. The polls will be closed, the tallies counted, and the country will take a collective sigh as we weigh what the results will mean until the next cycle starts. Hopefully that will wait at least until everyone is inaugurated first!

Time will march on. Those elected will serve, for better or for worse. And another election will come. In the meantime, there will be successes and failures. There will be triumphs and catastrophes. There will be wars and rumors of war. There will be steps of progress toward peace and heartbreaking slides backwards. Money will be made, money will be spent well, and money will be wasted. Jobs will be created, and others will be lost. Things and property will be manufactured, bought and sold. Taxes of some variety will be paid in some amount. Babies will be born, and friends, relatives, and loved ones will be buried.

Living Strength

Text: Daniel 1

In the movie, The Matrix, the main character, Neo, is offered the choice between two pills. One is red, and the other is blue. If Neo chooses the blue pill, his world would continue uninterrupted, just as he had always known it. Even the memory of the offer of the pills would only be as a faint dream. On the other hand, if Neo takes the red pill, he will go down a proverbial rabbit trail from which there is no return. After taking the red pill, Neo wakes up one morning and asks the question, “There’s no way back, is there?”

What do you do when you find yourself in an utterly new world, completely different from all that was familiar and comfortable before? What do you do when everything around you has changed and morphed into something else entirely? How do you wake up and face each day knowing that there is no way back, and nothing to go back to even if there was a way?