Life Matters - July 24, 2024

The dangerous anti-Trump anti-MAGA rhetoric, as a campaign platform for re-election, was indeed a sad self-commentary on an administration leaving so much policy wreckage in its wake that it seemed advantageous to deflect attention away from the results of its own policies. 

The Biden campaign for re-election has now officially ended. The disastrous policies, however, have not, and the damage has not been fully realized as many of them have not yet come to full fruition. The next administration will become the ungrateful inheritors of those fruits even as the present administration takes credit for and squanders its inheritance from the former. The Trump administration succeeded in cooling inflation. Until COVID. COVID created many problems. I lost a close friend to the virus. As did many others. Many lost a brother, a sister, a mother, a father. May we not soon forget loved ones. May we not soon forget the lessons learned. 

First and foremost of COVID’s lessons was the enhanced sense of our own mortality; was it not? A reminder that we are not here to stay, that we have no promise for tomorrow. The test was on. Will we fear death and desperately cling to life as it slips through our fingers? Or will we rely on God, trusting Him that He has this? That He will keep us in His care? Will we care about the health of others or will we desperately cling to our own? Will fear cause us to Forget Everything And Run or to Face Everything And Rise? Will we fear man and allow our souls to be ensnared by running mindlessly toward the very maw we are trying to escape? ‘’The devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.’’ (1 Peter 5:8) A lion, I’m told, puts his head down as he roars, causing the sound waves of his roar to vibrate the earth, reverberating out in every direction, striking fear into the four-footed forest dwellers even as they become confused as to the direction the dreadful roar is coming from. If, or when, they become overcome by fear, and mindlessly run, they may, as well as not, run right into the maw of the very beast they are exerting themselves to escape from. ‘’The fear of man’’ God says, ‘’bringeth a snare.’’ (Proverbs 29:25)  

God has a remedy for this malady of man-fear. ‘’Be still’’ He says, ‘’and know that I am God.’’ (Psalms 46:10) 

Many are the unsung heroes of this COVID pandemic. Many are the health-care workers who faced everything, including their own fears, and rose to the occasion at the risk of their own lives. Many later lost their jobs, their livelihoods, for refusing to get vaccinated against a virus they believed themselves to have gained natural immunity from and believed vaccination would compromise that immunity, furthering the risk of infection. But no, this administration stubbornly refused to acknowledge any other remedy than to be vaccinated.  

President Donald Trump was proud of his ‘’Operation Warp Speed’’ that saw the vaccine through federal regulations in record time, making it available to the American public and indeed, to the world, as soon as possible. The key word here being ‘’available.’’ It was not President Trump’s intention to push, to force, this vaccine on anybody. It was not his intention to demonize all other avenues and people seeking healthier, more natural, means for prevention and cure. Many found help for their bodies in Ivermectin, which the Biden government through its media, immediately shot down as ‘’horse wormer,” not knowing, not caring to do the research and for reasons still obscured, not willing to acknowledge the existence of Ivermectin for human consumption. For whatever reason, it seems, Ivermectin did not fit into the agenda using fear as a goad toward more centralized power.  

I fear… (there is a kind of fear that is good, such as when it prevents one from entering a bullpen unprepared for action in the event the bull turns on us, when we fear going against God’s will, order, and way, knowing there will be natural consequences for doing so) I fear there is a desensitization to reality going on in America on a level that has never been seen before. A sniper draws blood, coming within half an inch of snuffing out former President Trump’s life. Biden and some in the mainstream media at first spoke of a ‘’possible’’ assassination attempt. A comedian says ‘’next time don’t miss’’, plus many other sickly comments from sickly left-wing upstarts. The shooter was one such young and impressionable upstart and who can tell how much influence the anti-Trump campaign platform and its media operatives had in bending his young mind to try what he tried? I don’t have the answer for that question but it behooves the Democrats to heed it as a warning not to incite violence.  

At the sound of the first bullet whizzing past that drew blood from his right ear, President Trump went to his knees, and when helped to his feet he rose to the occasion. Turning his face enough to look at cameras and supporters he raised one fist to let all know he was OK! Not only was he OK but there was fight for integrity in American bureaucracy and the political arena left in him. A few days later at the RNC Convention he said it well; ‘’I stand before you in this arena by the grace of almighty God.’’  

Life Matters!