Sabbath Messages | Sabbath Message: Aug. 28, 2004
Good Sabbath
August 28, 2004 "O Lord,
Guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile."
"Nothing is politically right when it is morally wrong." (Daniel
O'Connel)
"He serves his party best who serves his country best." (Rutherford
B. Hayes)
Meanness is innate to politics, or so it has become. It ignites similar passions
to religion. God requires no passion, just faith and forgiveness...in each
other. He cares for how we behave to fellow humans. He warns that even a
fast - when we "taste" the deprivation of hunger - is a failure,
if we continue to practice the same sins as before the fast.
Fasting took the place of human and animal sacrifice. In this manner, we
can experience a little deprivation, as we pray for forgiveness; however
we falter if we fail to change our ways. Politics may suffer the same consequences.
When we substitute professional mischief-makers for our own thoughtfulness,
we become like monkeys: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" - until
evil suffocates our values.
"A politician - one that would circumvent God." (Shakespeare)
Did you ever meet or listen to someone and think "he or she would make
a great President"? Why did we think that? Because we admired the intelligent
expression, the broadminded view, the personality, the humorous self-depreciation,
the common sense, perhaps all of the above?
I've known and know people like that; they can be hard-nosed but fair-minded,
giving credit but with humility, intelligent yet able to communicate to all
levels of society. We pretend to search for honesty and perfection when neither
is what we most often elect; we allow ourselves the ignobility of war and
tolerate it within the rationalization of "patriotism" - that secret
place too often populated by scoundrels.
O God
You blessed me with brain-
Now teach me thoughtfulness.
You blessed me with heart
Now let it be soul.
You blessed me with love
Now let me teach and share it.
Let not politics soil Your blessings
As they so often have done.
Amen.
"The common people are but ill judges of a man's merits; they are slaves
to fame and their eyes are dazzled with the pomp of titles and large retinue.
No wonder, then, that they bestow their honors on those who least deserve
them." (Horace)
Let there be the light of practiced intelligence
Let truth illuminate our lives and decisions
For then we will have discovered ourselves
As we were before there came vanity.
Have a special Sabbath as summer days shorten into Autumn, sharing the rustic
leaves evolving into gorgeousness that only frost and appreciation can color.
sandy
