Remember to Pray for OUR President

 Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For 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.

I Timothy 2:1-4

For almost two decades I have felt a burden to pray for the President of the United States. I pray for his emotional and mental health, his relationship with his family and for his physical health as he faces the stress that comes with the office. I then pray for him to receive wisdom as he carries out his duties. Above all I pray that he will become more aware of the presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that he will know Jesus if he doesn’t and that he will grow in his knowledge of God if he already has a relationship with the Lord. I’ve prayed for presidents from both parties, even when I did not agree with them politically. My main concern has been for their spiritual well being and their destiny, not where they stand on the political spectrum.

There are times when I wonder if my brothers and sisters in Christ have forgotten that our politicians are still human beings. Like us, they need God’s grace. The ones who don’t know Jesus need an introduction. The ones who do, need discipleship. They need to be covered in prayer, even if they do not realize it and I Timothy 2 is a call to all believers to make sure that this very thing is what happens. Our prayers should be earnest as we lift our presidents and their families up before the Lord. We are to intercede on their behalf. We are supposed to give thanks for them, even if they are from the other political party. The very fact that this is written in the Bible means that it is not an option. It is what we are called to do. In fact, it is what we are designed to do.

I can already tell that President Joseph R. Biden will do some things that I disagree with. A good number of those who voted for him did so with the expectation that he will push a certain agenda. And while I disagree with some parts of that agenda, I will not let those issues blind me to the fact that he needs our prayers. I write this to encourage you to join me in praying for Joe Biden the man as well as for President Joe Biden, leader of the United States of America. Do so because our Father wants us to. As you do, remember to extend the same grace and love that our Father extends to us.

Lines That Should Not Be Crossed

I used to post to a blog with a different name. Back then I spent way too much time focusing on my stats, riding a rollercoaster that climbed and dropped with my daily reader count. With each post I learned a bit more about my core audience, my stats telling me what they would read and what they would recommend to their followers. Armed with this knowledge I would dive into my next posts both on my blogs and on my other social media channels. Over time I found that I could, with the right set of words, draw attention from many people including some who were much more famous than I. But as my stats improved, I noticed something I didn’t like. I noticed that I was bending over backwards, compromising what I truly believed in order to make my audience happy.

One event in particular served as an eye opener that forced me to change course. My audience was abuzz about a teenager who ran away from home out of fear for her life. This young woman received Jesus as her Lord and Savior, a decision that put her at odds with her family. Forced to leave home for her own safety, she found a group of Christians in a different state who received her with open arms. But eventually, the authorities caught up with her and the courts ordered that she be returned to her family. With help from her new found brothers and sisters in Christ she was able to appeal this decision and I learned about her while she was waiting for her appeal to be heard.

Many in my online group spoke out against the court decision, encouraging the family hiding the young woman to defy the court order. I found myself wondering if in fact this was the right way to proceed. Yes, I understood why the young woman felt that her home was no longer safe but at the same time I feared the possibility of setting a precedent where children could be hidden from their families simply because of a difference in opinion over religious belief. I was torn between my belief that we all should do our best to follow the law and those online voices telling me that the law was wrong.

And so I started asking questions, hoping my audience would enlighten me. Instead I was treated as if I had lost my mind. My audience wondered how I could even begin to question other Christians who were simply trying to protect the life of a child. I pointed out that God could protect her whether or not she went home. To this I was challenged to read the pages of another religion’s book in order to understand the real danger this young woman was in. Back then, and still today, I wondered why I needed to read a book from another religion when my Bible told me all I needed to know.

There, on the pages of the Bible, I find God. The Bible tells me that God is more than up to the task of protecting His children. With no compromise, my Bible told me not to give into fear but instead to trust in God. This seemed to contradict my audience who seemed to fear the power of another religion and its followers. I knew at that point that I had to make a choice. Either I stood in confidence in what God could do, even if I lost my audience, or I could stand in fear with my audience knowing that my stats would continue to grow even if my relationship with the Almighty did not.

For the record, the young woman had a birthday while waiting for her appeal to be heard. At that point she was able to legally choose for herself where she wanted to live, disappearing from the headlines as she went on with her life. Wherever she is, I pray she continues with the Lord, standing as a witness of how He can and does protect His children. As for my old blog, well it became harder and harder to write knowing what I would have to do to hold onto my audience. Eventually I took a break from blogging. Then I decided to let that old blog disappear, starting fresh here with these posts.

I thought about that old blog following the events of January 6, 2021. I thought about the mob and the riot, wondering how many were pulled along in the river of emotion that welled up at that moment. I suspect the large majority are normally law abiding citizens but on that day they got caught up in all of the excitement. In the heat of the moment they committed crimes against the very nation they claim to love. They crossed a line that just should not be crossed as they tried to win favor with those around them and with the world leader they came to support.

I recognized when it was time to draw a line: time to walk away from my old blog and the audience that followed. It was time to stop bending over backwards at the expense of what I truly believed and so I moved on. I hope that those who took part in the riots on January 6 recognize that they crossed a line they shouldn’t while bending over backwards for their audience of one. I also hope that our former president learned that there are lines that should not be crossed, especially when doing so means attacking that which you are called to defend.

Applying A Lesson From Football to the Capital Incident

It was third down and we needed our defense to make a stop. Both teams lined up, ready for the play of the game. But just before the snap, one of their linemen moved. Then their quarterback handed the ball off to their tailback who took the ball sixty yards for a touchdown. And while they celebrated in the end zone, we looked around expecting a yellow flag. It never came. After the game one of the referees came over to admit his mistake. He saw the false start but he didn’t call it. We all wished he had kept that to himself. Still, as coaches of a youth football team, we had to set the right example.

We were cheated because a ref decided to keep his flag in his pocket. It would have been easy to lose my temper. It would have been easy for any of us to launch into a tirade or to do something stupid, using the fact that we were cheated as a reason to do wrong. Instead we decided to act like adults. We thanked the refs for doing a (mostly) good job and then we pulled our team together to talk about what we could do better. As a team we took responsibility for our loss. As coaches we acted like adults. I wish that was what happened on January 6th down at our nation’s capital.

I understand that our president and his supporters feel cheated. I don’t agree with them but I do understand that this is what they are feeling. But we needed the crowd to handle these feelings correctly. The nation needed adults who understand that in life you will not always like the outcome. In fact, you may even get cheated out of something. However, that is not an excuse to incite an unruly mob. It is not an excuse to commit crimes. It is not an excuse to attack the government of this country or any other country. It is the time to act like adults.

Why Are Cable Connectors Different in the Burbs?

I’ve lived in the Philadelphia suburbs for just over 21 years, adding to the variety of places I have lived in during my lifetime. I grew up in the city, taking a short detour into a midwestern college town. We once even lived in what was at the time a relatively new development of townhouses, surrounded on one side by farmland and on the other by the construction site of a new interstate highway. I’ve lived in majority black communities and have also been in areas where I could count all of the black families on one hand. As a result I’ve had the opportunity to see how things are handled in different types of living areas. One of those lessons came when we first bought our current house, as we tried to sign up to get cable.

The previous owner was an elderly widower who moved in with his son out of concerns about his health. He had never had cable. So when I called the cable company, they said they needed to send a surveyor out to see if cable was even available in my neighborhood. I mentioned that both of my neighbors had cable, but I guess my word wasn’t good enough. Eventually, the surveyor came out and verified that cable was indeed available and soon the installation was under way.

Back then my neighborhood (in fact the entire region) was served by only one cable company, a company with which I had dealt with for years while living in Philly. To their credit, the installer was on time and did a very good job with the installation. He answered all of my questions and explained what I needed to know about my new cable boxes. He was careful not to damage my house and cleaned up near areas where he had to drill in order to pull the cables from one room to the next.

As he was hooking everything up I noticed that the cables he was using seemed to have heavy duty connectors on their ends. The metal on these connectors seemed thicker, made of heavy duty materials as opposed to the connectors I had grown accustomed to seeing in my apartment in the city. In fact, those city connectors always reminded me of tinfoil, whereas these suburban connectors looked like some sort of thick alloy. They were so different that I just had to ask why.

I’m not sure if the installer was supposed to give an honest answer to my question but he did. His answer, though simple, caught me completely off guard. It seemed that suburban customers got thicker metal connectors on their cables for one very simple reason: they complain more often. So it is true. The squeaky wheel does get the oil. It also gets better materials and better quality cable connectors. Up until that point I had expected a number of things to be different in the burbs vs how they were in the city. How cable is installed in a home was not one of the areas where I expected to see a difference.

So the next time you hear someone complain about how people in the city are often treated differently from those in the suburbs and how rural areas are also treated differently, remember not all cable installations are the same.