New and Improved

It is an election year. I have been scrambling hard to find things to be thankful in an election year. It is dismal and depressing and I have completely given up television, newspapers and I am close to moving into a cave and refusing to allow others to talk to me at all. As it is, when someone mentions politics an alarm goes off in my head and I go into defensive mode. I can only hear "wah, wah wah wah wah" just like Charlie Brown's teacher and my verbal communications become limited to the repetition of "You could be right", "well" , "might be so". Lest you think I have failed to be thankful, let me assure you I have triumphed. I am so thankful we only have to do this every four years. I am thankful that we have a merciful God who allows us enough room to hang ourselves and yet will step in to save us when we ask. I am beyond asking, I am into the begging mode. Please! Come Holy Spirit Come!

Here is what I really think is the bottom line on politics, and the feeding frenzy that everyone gets in at this time. We think a new party, a new person, a new policy, a new thought process will change everything and life will be good. I am sure that who we elect matters, don't miss understand, but I am equally sure there are wonderful, devout, thoughtful people who will argue both sides with passion about how one candidate is better than the other. I don't know how to think about it all anymore, so I have stopped thinking about it. I have prayed faithfully every day, and I encourage others to pray, that God will give us NOT the leader we deserve but the leader we need, who ever that is. That being a child of God will have some real significance in the world and we will positively transform the part we live in. That we will grow beyond the need to be right and the need to be heard more than the need to respond to the love God has poured out for us. I don't think the world of politics will ever address that, do you?

What is with our need for new and improved? I cannot tell you how often I buy new and improved stuff. My new laptop, new and improved. The laundry detergent for goodness sake is now condensed and improved. I bought new and improved sneakers and new and improved work out clothes and today I meet with a new and improved physical trainer for a new and improved work out. No doubt health and healing have already begun coursing through my body. I am not at all saying the my clothes aren't maybe a little cleaner but once you get to white, where do you go from there? My physical trainer is an excellent young man and I can tell you this, if I do what he tells me to do I will be in much better shape. My new laptop is very smart, I love that it figures out what I need and gets it for me. Still my life is about where my life always has been. Real transformation doesn't happen externally, it happens within. When inner transformation occurs it ought to change the external too, and the impact should be beyond new and improved, to new creation.

We will never shine up a pig and make it look like a Clydesdale and we can't change politics by changing the names. Real transformation, life changing transformation begins truly with new life. Why don't we spend oh say a billion dollars promoting that for a change. Maybe I could turn on my television again.