Charlie Wear’s Notes

Via Jordon Cooper…

It’s not that I haven’t had anything happening over the last few weeks. There’s been plenty of stuff going on in my life, from moving my office to bringing in more clients in my budding law practice. It’s just that I haven’t had much of an urge to write it down. I haven’t even taken the time to log-in to Twitter! I promise I am going to do that right after I finish this post.

I’ve been branching out to helping people with marital difficulties and financial problems in my law practice. This means that I have a bit of a learning curve going on, something that is always bound to keep me fairly occupied.

The election has ended and therefore a pretty constant source of entertainment for the past two years has gone dark. However the economy has been full of “interesting” ups and downs. Uncertainty can be a good thing, right?

And now it is Thanksgiving week, the time when we traditionally take a vacation to some place warmer with a lot of water! This year, however, no vacation and plenty of work! Ah well, that means a family Thanksgiving dinner this week, something to look forward to.

Sometimes it is hard to know who your friends are. Just ask Sara Palin! I was talking to a friend who leads a ministry yesterday. Apparently someone he works with has been quite vocal about his political choices this year. His best retort to those who disagree? "You are too ignorant to know who to vote for." He has had to watch as this person has attacked others and loaded on the invectives and insults to his face.

It would probably feel pretty good to cut off the offender and slash his ministry support. My sarcastic comment to my friend, "Welcome to the ministry!" He was asking for my counsel. You understand, the offender is a Christian minister! I told my friend, you have a choice, you can decide who will be the first person to turn the other cheek, and be loving toward someone who is behaving like an enemy.

Many who claim to be Christ-followers have trouble with these commandments of Jesus. We love to proclaim who we are against and label them as anti-Christian. This is no more apparent than when we are in the middle of a political season. I mean, how can we possibly pray for a pro-choice candidate? How can we turn the other cheek toward those who are attacking our leadership role in ministry? And yet, we have to acknowledge that these propositions are not merely nice ideas, they are standards for behavior that Christ commands.

Last January I made three political predictions:

1. I predict that Barack Obama will not be the next president of the United States.

2. I predict that the next president of the United States will not be a Republican.

3. I predict that the Republican nominee will not be a Mormon.

Well, okay, I didn’t miss the boat completely, I was 2/3 right! Of course, I was wrong about the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. At the time I felt that it was more likely that we would have a woman president than the first black president. I believed that the cultural barriers faced by Mr. Obama were too great to overcome.

I am so glad that I was wrong. However, if one can trust exit polling, white Americans voted for John McCain. It was a multi-racial coalition that gave President-elect Obama his victory.

Another point I made in January. John McCain’s loss makes it unlikely that any person born in the 1930s will be elected President of the United States. I wonder if it has something to do with that generational cohort being born and raised in the aftermath of the great depression? Likewise, we have yet to elect a president from the 1950s. There is still a chance that might happen. In 2012, someone born in 1950 will be 62, a reasonable presidental age.

For those of us that believe that prayer makes a difference, it is time to pray for the president-elect and for our country. With so much turmoil it would be well if providence intervened.