The Winds of Change

Can you feel it? Daily, there is something different. A growing tide, slowly and powerfully building, rolling in, easing out, returning stronger. Like a wind bearing the scent and hope of a long-ago promised rain that will, finally, inexorably, be delivered to the dormant desert landscape. What is is? Can you feel it?

A determination, a need recognized at long last, an understanding that something is coming! Everyday, eyes see the determination growing to be part of the change when it arrives. Indeed, arrive it will! We know it is over due, and can't understand why it has taken so very, very long to arrive. We ache for it, we need it, and we feed it. Yet, somehow, we are afraid to start it. We fear what it might do, what it might change; how high the cost?

How high the cost?

There is, in these United States of America, a growing frustration with the way things are. The frustration builds, just a little bit, every single day, for one after another person. We feel it in the family home, where the very nature of a "family" is being assaulted and challenged. It's partly a matter of the "gay issue", but it's more than that. It's also a challenge of how men and women interact with each other, with their roles in the home and in society, at work and at church, in how we see ourselves. It shows up in how we talk to each other, in how we raise our kids, in how we do or don't value life. Can you feel it?

The tide is building.

Churches are being bullied into silence. The Press chooses neither decency or integrity. Judges are acting as Congress. Congress acts like movie stars or, more accurately, like children, always chasing things they want, rather than seeking to fulfill their oaths. History books are being...adjusted. Animals are valued above unborn human babies. It's cooking us from the inside, and we are just about to burn. Somehow, the chaplains in our military are supposed to faithfully uphold their duty to guide and uplift our troops...as long as the chaplains don't say key-words, like "Jesus" or "Christian". Seriously? Might as well ask a mechanic to do the job.

Interestingly, as the noose tightens on so many bedrock freedoms and cornerstone rights, people are finding hope, and it's not quietly done. These hopefuls calling out to the Americans around themselves, sharing their hope, building encouragement. It's indomitable, illogical and unstoppable. Patriotism is a lot like a name or a faith; it's close to our passion's beating heart, it's deeply personal, it's part of us!

So, I ask you: Can you feel it?

It's true, there could be a down-side. It could cause government systems to fail. We could see martial law. There's a chance that people could die. Take a breath and ask yourself a question: Is it the right thing?

If so, what are you prepared to do? Is there a cost that is too high? Or are we paying that price already?

"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced."

James Arthur Baldwin