Optimism isn’t Deaf
“And David said to Abishai, and to all his servants, Behold, my son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life: how much more now may this Benjamite do it? Let him alone, and let him curse; for the Lord hath bidden him.” II Samuel 16:11 KJV
I confess, I might be one of the reasons for the coronavirus. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t start it nor have I spread it. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to obey the advice of our leaders and the doctors. I definitely would never wish it on anyone.
First, let me tell you why I think the way I do. Many, many years ago, I went through the roughest part of my life. I was different than most guys my age. A married life and kids was what I really wanted. At that point in my life, that’s exactly what I had.
One of the biggest joys in my life was putting my son to bed at night. I loved reading to him and teaching him silly things. He got to the point, because we had a flag book we often reviewed, that he could point out about half the state flags.
I’m not exactly sure when all of it started falling apart, but eventually my son’s mom and I went our separate ways. My dream came crashing down. I was devastated. Life seemed to lose all purpose.
Why was this happening to me? I really could not figure it out. Thinking it over, I blamed God. My dream, of my little family, must have not been a very big deal for Him. He could do everything but keep my little family together. I was crushed and went into a depression.
I still got to see my son one day during the week and every other weekend. With that being the best I could do, I tried to find a little happiness there. Instead of being a father, I became a man desperate to hold on to a small part of his dream. I so looked forward to my time with him.
As time went on, though, I realized my little boy needed more than that. He needed a father. I switched roles. It probably confused him. After all, he had his Dad wrapped around his finger. Now his father wanted him to do chores, clean his room, and study. He wasn’t used to that world.
Our relationship began to deteriorate. I suggested to him that we might need a little break from each other. The thought was for two or three weeks, at the most. Maybe he would then realize that he, too, had something to miss. It didn’t work and our separation has gone on many years.
What led me to the role of becoming a father, and not just a friend who could buy him things and not require him to take any responsibilities, was a habit I still do to this day. I decided it did me no good to be mad at God. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, God does have a purpose for everything.
Throughout my life I have always wanted to read all the way through the Bible. Growing up, the King James Version was all I really had. Several times I had the goal of reading it from front to back.
Genesis came up and that went fine. There were lots of stories in Genesis. Exodus, was good, too. Although there were a few chapters that were tough to get through, there were enough stories in there. Then you hit Leviticus and all those laws and Jewish celebrations. There weren’t as many stories there.
You make it through Leviticus, then comes Numbers. Now your thoughts turn toward a reality that you are never going to make it through this whole Bible. That’s usually where my quest ended.
Unfortunately, most of our Presidents have been very partisan. In my opinion, most of these have put their interest, or their party’s interest, above what is best for our nation. Plain and simple, it takes a great man to step back from those interests and understand that we are a country that works better when we work together.
That’s not to say that we haven’t had Presidents that could rise above that self-induced pettiness. We have had several selfless Presidents. I want to explore a few of those.
George Washington is the most obvious one. Although a little naïve at times, Washington pretty much gave his life for our country. With an almost childlike innocence, Washington thought his sense of loyalty and dedication was contagious. Often he thought people were aboard his ship when they were really poking holes in the sides.
Washington would take advice with even those who opposed him. He would shun the crown of a king that many wanted to place on his head. He looked at opposition, not as a threat, but a means to convince the other side to join him. Being open, honest, and listening to their concerns, they could trust that they were playing a part in his decisions.
I think the saddest part of Washington’s life was the fact that he would live less than three years after he left the Presidency. While he was alive, there still was a living image of what leadership and citizenship should be. The partisan divide would really start in the election after his death. Partisanship was born.
It would be over sixty years before we would see Washington’s type of leadership again. A humble log splitter, who had spent most of his adult life in Illinois, would be the next candidate I chose to display for his great love for our country and outstanding leadership.
Abraham Lincoln seemed an unlikely President. But even those who didn’t like him had to like his personality. Often the victim of some of his own jokes, he couldn’t help but to bring a smile to a conversation. With that sense of humor, though, many thought he might be a better fit for the court jester than the Presidency.
Lincoln did the unthinkable when he was elected President. He chose many of his opponents for cabinet positions. Many of those advisers, who sometimes secretly worked behind his back, were working to replace him in the next Presidential election.
Lincoln wasn’t stupid, he knew what they were up to. Still he, like a great leader should, understood that opposition needed to be won over, not crushed. One by one he took them on. By the next election, none of them stood as a serious challenge to his reelection.
Patience and personal sacrifice were two of the tools in Lincoln’s tool chest. He let people think what they wanted to about him. Today, everyone knows the Lincoln name. Can you name two members of his cabinet? Great leaders win in the test of time.
The Bible is full of different people and different personalities. If we look very carefully, we can see ourselves in many of those characters. Good or bad, inside us rests the traits that many of the Bible characters possessed.
We don’t get to see too much of this Bible character. He is just mentioned sixteen times in thirteen verses. Although his story takes place in the Old Testament, he is mentioned in four verses in the New Testament.
I’m not really sure if I have ever heard a sermon on Abel. When he has been mentioned, it is usually in a story about his older brother Cain. Cain can come up in sermons about a host of topics and most of those aren’t good.
Abel is the first example in the Bible of bad things happening to good people. Almost naturally, Abel brings his best to sacrifice to God. He doesn’t think of his family or himself first. He thinks about God first.
What does Abel get for having such a good heart? Death. Abel is killed by his jealous older brother. God is very upset with Cain and punishes him, but that doesn’t do anything anything to help Abel’s situation. The good-hearted Abel becomes the first blood sacrifice to die unfairly.
Often we can get uncomfortable when bad things happen to good people. We try to stand in God’s place and want visual justice for the wrong. The story of Abel offers a different solution. It turns the table back on us. It’s not whether justice should be carried out, but are you willing, regardless of the cost, to place God first in your life.
God was proud of Abel and He said so. Abel didn’t place himself first, he placed God first.
After my separation, I had more time on my hands. I decided to get up early and try my Bible reading task again. I saved up some money and bought one of those “read in two years” Bibles. There was no way I could read it in just one year. That would just be too much daily reading and I knew I would just give up on it again.
I found an easier version to read, the NIV. This Bible was also divided in such a manner that you would read some Old Testament, some New Testament, and it mixed in Psalms and Proverbs. To help me out, I bought a little three-ring binder, and would write out some of the verses that motivated me.
In addition to that, I decided to develop a prayer life. In almost a way to prove to God that I was doing my prayers every day, I wrote out my prayers. This also gave me evidence that I could take to God as proof that He didn’t answer my prayers.
I started this habit on December 1, 1999. There have been moments, especially when I first started, that I had gaps of not doing it. But, for the most part, I have been doing it for over twenty years.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from this was that God did not always give me the answer I wanted. Looking back now, I’m glad He used more than one occasion to tell me no. The main reason I say that is that when He said no, the answer He gave me was always better.
My next Presidential choice is somewhat surprising. If you were to ask ten people to tell you something about him, it’s unlikely they would even know who he was. Actually, he was never even elected President. When his term was over, no one wanted him as their candidate. He doesn’t seem to get upset by this. He just seemed content to just ride into the sunset unnoticed.
Chester Arthur is not a name that comes up on many, if anyone’s, list of great Presidents. I’m not sure I would ever put him on one of mine. But from a leadership standpoint, of what was best for our nation over what was best for himself, I think he more than qualifies.
It is believed Chester Arthur was born in Vermont. Since birth records weren’t well-kept at the time, some even believe he might have been born in Canada. His father, who was from Ireland, did bounce around from job to job, and from place to place. So Arthur was really one of those self-made Presidents.
After the Civil War, Arthur got interested and involved in politics. Living in New York at the time, he discovered the best way to do that was to get involved in the New York political machine. Patronage was a big part of New York politics at that time.
Patronage is a style of government where your government job totally depended on your support for the party in power. Vocally, financially, and through your actions, party support was a requirement if you wanted to get or keep your job. It didn’t really matter if you believed what the party stood for, as long as you possessed those elements, you had a job.
This style fit Arthur perfectly. Before you knew it, he was the given the job of Collector at the Port in New York. The salary was small, but your pockets were often lined with skimming some of the taxes you collected. At this time, and in this position, Arthur was making more than the President of the United States.
Citizens were starting to get upset with this type of system. They wanted a Civil Service system where government jobs were not politically based. Having a job from one President to the next, or one Governor to the next, should be more important than what you stood for.
Changing the system would be upsetting to people like Arthur, who had invested so much time and energy into it. So, a battle brewed between the Civil Service Reform people and the Patronage-minded people.
America was living in an age where balance on the President-Vice President ticket was extremely important. Often a campaign would have two extremely different candidates on their ticket. Such was the case on the Garfield–Arthur ticket.
James Garfield was a Civil Service Reform politician and Arthur, as we know, was Patronage-minded. Having them team up would blunt the Civil Service-Patronage argument. The Civil Service people were happy because Garfield was President and the Vice President didn’t really have any power or influence.
Then Garfield was shot and died. Arthur was the new President. Patronage people, although they didn’t want to see Garfield die, must have been licking their chops. To their surprise, their poster boy decided to honor Garfield by following his Civil Service reform.
This decision by Arthur probably cost him a chance to be reelected on his own. Patronage would have a built-in political support system for him. The party bosses would have fallen in line because they would have a friend in the White House. After he left office, Arthur would have probably been set up financially for life.
Instead, Arthur knew that Patronage was not good for the country, even though it would be good for him. Chester Arthur didn’t look out for Chester Arthur, Chester Arthur looked out for America.
There is another Bible character that can send mixed messages to our minds about right and wrong. His life is one of great devotion to God and bouts of disobedience. He is often on the run for doing nothing wrong. Yet, when he has moments to shine for God, he places his own self-interest above God’s.
It is David’s life that I am talking about. As he stepped into adulthood, he would spend a lot of time running from King Saul. David loved King Saul and was extremely loyal to him. Yet, King Saul saw David as a threat because he believed the people loved David more than they loved him.
But today let’s talk about a different time in David’s life. Let’s talk about David the father. David’s first-born son was named Amnon. Amnon, if you remember, lusted after his step-sister Tamar. After he raped her, he didn’t want to have anything else to do with her.
Daddy David didn’t do anything to Amnon or at least the Bible doesn’t mention anything. This really upset Tamar’s brother Absalom. Absalom was so upset, in fact, that he had some of his friends kill his step-brother Amnon.
Now David decides he wants to step into the father role and he banishes Absalom as punishment. A few years later Absalom gets to plead his case and David takes him back into the family. Absalom is still hurt about what his father didn’t do in Amnon’s case and what he did do in his case.
Absalom plots to overthrow his Dad. He believes that if his father suffers, then justice will be served. There might have also been a little bit of him that thought that would make all the bad feeling he had about his Dad go away. It never works that way. Forgiveness is usually the only thing that cures those ills.
The Bible verse above is about David being on the run from Absalom’s overthrow. If you read the above verse you might understand why I had a very hard time reading the Bible, with the King James Version at least, all the way through in my youth.
Other versions make it much easier to understand. For instance, the NIV states, for the above verse: “David then said to Abishai and all his officials, ‘My son, my own flesh and blood, is trying to kill me. How much more, then, this Benjamite! Leave him alone; let him curse, for the Lord has told him to.’”
See, David, in his fleeing, came to one of Saul’s family’s towns. They really hadn’t gotten over the fact that David was king in place of Saul. It’s like they were blaming David for Saul’s death.
As David came into the town, this man comes out yelling something like: “You are getting what you deserve.” Then he starts throwing stones at David. Abishai, David’s trusted aide, basically says to David, “Why don’t you just let me kill him?”
In a somewhat surprising statement, David basically says, “No, even though he is totally against me, God has sent him. Let him get it out of his system and let him be.” David doesn’t condemn the man for thinking differently. There is no hint of revenge. David seems to be okay with the fact that the man thinks differently than he does.
My life has never been better. Twenty-five years ago, I would have never believed that was possible. Why? Because now I know that God has got it all under control. His reasoning is far greater than my understanding. He really does know what He is doing and what is for the best.
Surprisingly, the wall of three-ringed binders I have in my basement, full of my Bible passages and prayers, just gathers dust. I’ve never once had to pull it out to prove anything to God.
As far as the coronavirus goes, and my part, here is where I feel I need to take some of the blame. For several years now, my heart has been ripped apart for our country. We are always at each other’s throats. The divide among us is unreal. No side can ever do right by the other side.
As this division seems to grow and grow, everyone seems content to just let it happen. Leadership in our nation has become a laughing matter. We have some who can lead like-minded people, but no one seems to care about the nation as a whole. When great leadership is present, together everyone feels like they are playing a part.
I love my country and my fellow citizens. Sitting around a table without demanding the other person come around to our way of thinking is not American to me. We need to love one another and respect one another despite the fact that each of us sometimes has very strong opinions.
That’s what the founding fathers did. Very few of them always agreed with each other. But they realized to be a great country we had to allow others to disagree with us in order for them to allow us to disagree with them.
For the last few years, every day, I have prayed for four things: our nation, our division, our leaders, and our lack of leadership. God didn’t seem to be answering my prayers, or so I thought.
This coronavirus is a very bad thing. But the heartfelt stories I have heard of people helping each other sometimes brings tears to my eyes. I have not heard one of those stories say they asked the person whether they were conservative or liberal, a democrat or a republican. Sadly, it has taken a great disaster for us to truly care for each other.
Some leaders are still determined to make this political, but the ones that stand out the most to me aren’t those. Real leaders have emerged, not because they are republicans or democrats. They have risen up because they understand that we all need to work together. Now, that’s what real leadership is all about.
I still don’t understand why God answers prayers the way He does. But I do know that He always answers them with His purpose in mind. I trust him, do you?
