How important is it to be with your parents when they are about to pass? Add to that scenario things that didn’t get spoken about and feelings getting hurt because of that. Not saying the words, “I forgive you,” and “Will you forgive me?,” creates a lot of pain over what we didn’t say. Compare these things with what just happened in our nation’s capital and you know why I’m writing this blog.
Some people take for-granted that their parents will always be here for them while others stop speaking for years to their parents over some small issue or situation. What would you do if God, who is watching everything we do, sent a stranger, an angel, to help us deal with our situation? That angel tells you that every day is a gift from God and that many people waste so much of what God gives them. They don’t take the time to forgive and to accept forgiveness, or for that matter, to be thankful for all that God does for them in times of peace and in times of trouble.
Have you read the Bible; have you taken the time to understand why this book is still so relevant today in our country’s problems? In America’s struggle to remain a democracy, why have so many people turned away from God? I have always been amazed how beautiful God’s creation is as I travel across the country, but I’m terribly upset at those Americans who think it’s O.K. to storm one of America’s greatest architectural buildings as a means to destroy our country’s institutions and kill our elected officials. Freedom of speech does not mean using violence to make changes. It means carefully analyzing what needs to change and listening to other points of view. It means seeing a problem and working together to solve it. I believe God gives us these abilities to build a better America and to work together to protect His creations. In the words of the adage, ubuntu, “I am because we are.”
One of the biggest problems we have with one another is trust or the lack of trust. God, as our Father, has always been with us through everything we do as individuals and as a country. I believe Americans have lost faith that He will always be with us because they have placed their faith in worldly things. We’ve lost our trust in the One who created us and everything we love. With a lack of faith and trust, we’ve also lost the truth, the truth about who we are as a country, and quite possibly, as individuals. If we cannot be truthful about who we are, how are we ever going to accept responsibility for right and wrong, how will our children not become clones of those who stormed our capital, and how can democracy survive those who have made a demonic president into their idol? How do we stop other “Hitler-like people” from gaining access to government offices?
The answer is through caring, listening, cooperating, working together, and most of all, loving. Our faith in the good of our fellow man, our trust that God will always walk with us, and our ability to seek the truth will re-unite our nation; we need to walk in each other’s shoes. We need to understand how each other feels to move forward. Just as denying a dying parent closure on issues that have troubled them for years, we must open the flood gates of gratitude for everything God has done for us. We must grow our abilities to forgive and to accept forgiveness. Our ability to move forward depends on being honest about what got us into these problems in the first place. Most importantly, it is our inhumanity to each other that has caused apathy, racism, economic upheaval, health stagnation, and environmental issues to exponentially expand in our lives.
What will help us resolve problems with our relationships is returning to the Bible to seek His truth, not ours. In seeking God first, all these things that we need and want will be provided for us by our Eternal Father. In the depths of my Christian soul, I pray that God will hear our cries because in the end of our lives, we will have to speak to Him about what we did and what we didn’t do to make the world a better place. I pray that He will forgive us because we have forgiven each other. That is the true definition of democracy, a shared life of freedom, justice, and liberty through forgiveness.
Anna Hartt
