The man who would be president

From the Asian Times Online, 2/26/08
By Spengler

"Cherchez la femme," advised Alexander Dumas in: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America.

We know less about Senator Obama than about any prospective president in American history. His uplifting rhetoric is empty, as Hillary Clinton helplessly protests. His career bears no trace of his own character, not an article for the Harvard Law Review he edited, or a single piece of legislation. He appears to be an empty vessel filled with the wishful thinking of those around him. But there is a real Barack Obama. No man - least of all one abandoned in infancy by his father - can conceal the imprint of an impassioned mother, or the influence of a brilliant wife.

America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.

Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised.

Ann Dunham died in 1995, and her character emerges piecemeal from the historical record, to which I will return below. But Michelle Obama is a living witness. Her February 18 comment that she felt proud of her country for the first time caused a minor scandal, and was hastily qualified. But she meant it, and more. The video footage of her remarks shows eyes hooded with rage as she declares:

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.

The desperation, frustration and disappointment visible on Michelle Obama's face are not new to the candidate's wife; as Steve Sailer, Rod Dreher and other commentators have noted, they were the theme of her undergraduate thesis, on the subject of "blackness" at Princeton University. No matter what the good intentions of Princeton, which founded her fortunes as a well-paid corporate lawyer, she wrote, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong."

Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. "I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There's Barack Obama the phenomenon. He's an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there's the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy's a little less impressive," she told a fundraiser in February 2007.

"For some reason this guy still can't manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn't get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, "She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she'd like to meet him sometime." Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.

"Frustration" and "disappointment" have dogged Michelle Obama these past 20 years, despite her US$300,000 a year salary and corporate board memberships. It is hard for the descendants of slaves not to resent America. They were not voluntary immigrants but kidnap victims, subjected to a century of second-class citizenship even after the Civil War ended slavery. Blackness is not the issue; General Colin Powell, whose parents chose to immigrate to America from the West Indies, saw America just as other immigrants do, as a land of opportunity. Obama's choice of wife is a failsafe indicator of his own sentiments. Spouses do not necessarily share their likes, but they must have their hatreds in common. Obama imbibed this hatred with his mother's milk.

Michelle Obama speaks with greater warmth of her mother-in-law than of her husband. "She was kind of a dreamer, his mother," Michelle Obama was quoted in the January 25 Boston Globe. "She wanted the world to be open to her and her children. And as a result of her naivete, sometimes they lived on food stamps, because sometimes dreams don't pay the rent. But as a result of her naivete, Barack got to see the world like most of us don't in this country." How strong the ideological motivation must be of a mother to raise her children on the thin fair in pursuit of a political agenda.

"Naivete" is a euphemism for Ann Dunham's motivation. Friends describe her as a "fellow traveler", that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth, according to a March 27, 2007, Chicago Tribune report. Many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice. Ann Dunham met and married the Kenyan economics student Barack Obama, Sr, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and in 1967 married the Indonesian student Lolo Soetero. It is unclear why Soetero's student visa was revoked in 1967 - the fact but not the cause are noted in press accounts. But it is probable that the change in government in Indonesia in 1967, in which the leftist leader Sukarno was deposed, was the motivation.

Soetero had been sponsored as a graduate student by one of the most radical of all Third World governments. Sukarno had founded the so-called Non-Aligned Movement as an anti-colonialist turn at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. Before deposing him in 1967, Indonesia's military slaughtered 500,000 communists (or unfortunates who were mistaken for communists). When Ann Dunham chose to follow Lolo Soetero to Indonesia in 1967, she brought the six-year-old Barack into the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage, immediate following one of the worst episodes of civil violence in post-war history.

Dunham's experience in Indonesia provided the material for a doctoral dissertation celebrating the hardiness of local cultures against the encroaching metropolis. It was entitled, "Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds". In this respect Dunham remained within the mainstream of her discipline. Anthropology broke into popular awareness with Margaret Mead's long-discredited Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which offered a falsified ideal of sexual liberation in the South Pacific as an alternative to the supposedly repressive West. Mead's work was one of the founding documents of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and anthropology faculties stood at the left-wing fringe of American universities.

In the Global South, anthropologists went into the field and took matters a step further. Peru's brutal Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerilla movement was the brainchild of the anthropologist Efrain Morote Best, who headed the University of San Cristobal of Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, between 1962 and 1968. Dunham's radicalism was more vicarious; she ended her career as an employee of international organizations.

Barack Obama received at least some instruction in the Islamic faith of his father and went with him to the mosque, but the importance of this experience is vastly overstated by conservative commentators who seek to portray Obama as a Muslim of sorts. Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. In the Muslim world of the 1960s, nationalism rather than radical Islam was the ideology of choice among the enraged. Radical Islam did not emerge as a major political force until the nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser or a Sukarno failed.

Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

Since the Ronald Reagan boom began in 1984, the year the American stock market doubled, Americans have enjoyed a quarter-century of rising wealth. Even the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000 did not interrupt the upward trajectory of household assets, as the housing price boom eclipsed the effect of equity market weakness. America's success made it a magnet for the world's savings, and Americans came to believe that they were riding a boom that would last forever, as I wrote recently [1].

Americans regard upward mobility as a God-given right. America had a double founding, as David Hackett Fischer showed in his 1989 study, Albion's Seed . Two kinds of immigrants founded America: religious dissidents seeking a new Promised Land, and economic opportunists looking to get rich quick. Both elements still are present, but the course of the past quarter-century has made wealth-creation the sine qua non of American life. Now for the first time in a generation Americans have become poorer, and many of them have become much poorer due to the collapse of home prices. Unlike the Reagan years, when cutting the top tax rate from a punitive 70% to a more tolerable 40% was sufficient to start an economic boom, no lever of economic policy is available to fix the problem. Americans have no choice but to work harder, retire later, save more and retrench.

This reversal has provoked a national mood of existential crisis. In Europe, economic downturns do not inspire this kind of soul-searching, for richer are poorer, remain what they always have been. But Americans are what they make of themselves, and the slim makings of 2008 shake their sense of identity. Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm - "Great Awakenings" – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.

Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

The George W Bush administration has squandered a great strategic advantage in a sorry lampoon of nation-building in the Muslim world, and has made enemies out of countries that might have been friendly rivals, notably Russia. Americans question the premise of America's standing as a global superpower, and of the promise of upward mobility and wealth-creation. If elected, Barack Obama will do his utmost to destroy the dual premises of America's standing. It might take the country another generation to recover.

"Evil will oft evil mars", J R R Tolkien wrote. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama. As he recalled in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama idealized the Kenyan economist who had married and dumped his mother, and was saddened to learn that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, was a sullen, drunken polygamist. The elder Obama became a senior official of the government of Kenya after earning a PhD at Harvard. He was an abusive drunk and philanderer whose temper soured his career.

The senior Obama died in a 1982 car crash. Kenyan government officials in those days normally spent their nights drinking themselves stupid at the Pan-Afrique Hotel. Two or three of them would be found with their Mercedes wrapped around a palm tree every morning. During the 1970s I came to know a number of them, mostly British-educated hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.

Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama's father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals - and nothing can be more terrible for the system. Even those who despise America for its blunders of the past few years should ask themselves whether the world will be a safer place if America retreats into a self-pitying shell.

Note
1. Obama bin lottery Asia Times Online, January 29, 2008.

Coming to a weak nation near you!

A growing trend in Europe, will the UK be the first to crumble to Islam, and what will it mean for the future of our nation should Muslims, or any group of people to have "A law within the law" of a nation?

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for the U.K. to adopt Sharia law for Muslims.

Rowan Williams suggested today that it “seems unavoidable” that elements of Islamic law be accepted into the British legal system.

The head of the Church of England believes that officially sanctioning Sharia will improve community relations and aid integration. He conceded that his view would be controversial but said similar concessions to other religions were already allowed in the U.K.

“Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that has sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states: the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women,” he told the BBC World at One program.

“But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them.”

Williams pointed out that some Orthodox Jewish courts already operated in the U.K., and that anti-abortion views of Catholics and other Christians were “accommodated within the law.”

Sharia is a code of Islamic law implemented in Muslim countries across the world including Libya and Sudan, but most modern Islamic nations operate a dual legal system with elements of secular law alongside Sharia.

The Archbishop believes that Sharia should be introduced as an officially sanctioned legal alternative in the U.K. when it came to issues such as marriage and divorce.

“It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of Sharia are already recognized in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system,” he said.

“The whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways the law of the land pays respect to custom and community, that’s already there.”

The Anglican leader cited the dispute over allowing Catholic adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples as an example of a universal and unchallenged rule of secular law not being accepted by everybody.

“That principle that there is only one law for everybody is an important pillar of our social identity as a western democracy,” he said.

“But I think it is a misunderstanding to suppose that means people don’t have other affiliations, other loyalties which shape and dictate how they behave in society and that the law needs to take some account of that.”

The Archbishop emphasised that it was important to change British perceptions of Sharia. There is no single codified set of universal Sharia laws and governments from one country to the next employ very different strands.

He said people needed to look at Islamic law “with a clear eye and not imagine, either, that we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and just associate it with ... Saudi Arabia, or whatever.”

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation an Islamic charity, welcomed the Archbishop’s suggestion.

“These comments further underline the attempts by both our great faiths to build respect and tolerance,” he said.

“Sharia law for civil matters is something which has been introduced in some western countries with much success. I believe that Muslims would take huge comfort from the Government allowing civil matters being resolved according to their faith.”

Simple Truth

The Gospel

God has granted us a history and a future, created in His image, we are unlike any living thing on earth. Given free will and conscience, you can search out God and His good and perfect plan for your life, or deny His sovereignty and reject the provision He has made to reconcile your soul to Him in the sacrifice of His son, face judgment and an eternal hell.

The good news is, so great is God’s love for us, and His desire that we return to Him from our inherited and chosen state of sinfulness that He willingly sent His only son, perfect and sinless, to shame, torture and death on the cross to pay the price for our disobedience and so make a way home for us. We are all imperfect because of sin, so we judge ourselves by imperfect standards to be good. We also compare ourselves to other people who are in no better shape than ourselves, giving us a false sense of security about the state of our souls.

So God offers a plan for your soul, free of charge, a treasure greater than any thing of value on earth! By His grace alone He calls us to faith in Jesus as the Savior of our souls, that if we believe He is the Son of God, that He died for our sins on the cross in our place, was buried and in three days rose alive in a real and glorified body, then ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father until the day of His return, we will be saved from God’s righteous judgment on us for our sins!

Understand that no matter how good we try to be, no one is worthy of Salvation. This is why we can only be saved by faith in Christ, given by the grace of God. It makes no difference where we come from, our ethnicity or social class. No matter what we have done, how depraved our thoughts or actions, the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross is sufficient to overcome all our sins, past, present, and future. By His shed blood, Christ’s righteousness covers those who believe in Him, and presents us clean of the stain of sin before God the Father.

Media Crime

Friday Mornings at the Pentagon
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers


Over the last 12 months, 1,042 soldiers, Marines, sailors and Air Force personnel have given their lives in the terrible duty that is war. Thousands more have come home on stretchers, horribly wounded and facing months or years in military hospitals.

This week, I'm turning my space over to a good friend and former roommate, Army Lt. Col. Robert Bateman , who recently completed a year long tour of duty in Iraq and is now back at the Pentagon.

Here's Lt. Col. Bateman's account of a little-known ceremony that fills the halls of the Army corridor of the Pentagon with cheers, applause and many tears every Friday morning. It first appeared on May 17 on the Weblog of media critic and pundit Eric Alterman at the Media Matters for America Website.

"It is 110 yards from the "E" ring to the "A" ring of the Pentagon. This section of the Pentagon is newly renovated; the floors shine, the hallway is broad, and the lighting is bright. At this instant the entire length of the corridor is packed with officers, a few sergeants and some civilians, all crammed tightly three and four deep against the walls. There are thousands here.

This hallway, more than any other, is the `Army' hallway. The G3 offices line one side, G2 the other, G8 is around the corner. All Army. Moderate conversations flow in a low buzz. Friends who may not have seen each other for a few weeks, or a few years, spot each other, cross the way and renew.

Everyone shifts to ensure an open path remains down the center. The air conditioning system was not designed for this press of bodies in this area.

The temperature is rising already. Nobody cares. "10:36 hours: The clapping starts at the E-Ring. That is the outermost of the five rings of the Pentagon and it is closest to the entrance to the building. This clapping is low, sustained, hearty. It is applause with a deep emotion behind it as it moves forward in a wave down the length of the hallway.

"A steady rolling wave of sound it is, moving at the pace of the soldier in t he wheelchair who marks the forward edge with his presence. He is the first. He is missing the greater part of one leg, and some of his wounds are still suppurating. By his age I expect that he is a private, or perhaps a private first class.

"Captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels meet his gaze and nod as they applaud, soldier to soldier. Three years ago when I described one of these events, those lining the hallways were somewhat different. The applause a little wilder, perhaps in private guilt for not having shared in the burden .. yet.

"Now almost everyone lining the hallway is, like the man in the wheelchair, also a combat veteran. This steadies the applause, but I think deepens the sentiment. We have all been there now. The soldier's chair is pushed by, I believe, a full colonel.

"Behind him, and stretching the length from Rings E to A, come more of his peers, each private, corporal, or sergeant assisted as need be by a field grade officer. "11:00 hours: Twenty-four minutes of steady applause. My hands hurt, and I laugh to myself at how stupid that sounds in my own head. My hands hurt. Please! Shut up and clap. For twenty-four minutes, soldier after soldier has come down this hallway - 20, 25, 30. Fifty-three legs come with them, and perhaps only 52 hands or arms, but down this hall came 30 solid hearts.

They pass down this corridor of officers and applause, and then meet for a private lunch, at which they are the guests of honor, hosted by the generals. Some are wheeled along. Some insist upon getting out of their chairs, to march as best they can with their chin held up, down this hallway, through this most unique audience. Some are catching handshakes and smiling like a politician at a Fourth of July parade. More than a couple of them seem amazed and are smiling shyly.

"There are families with them as well: the 18-year-old war-bride pushing her 19-year-old husband's wheelchair and not quite understanding why her husband is so affected by this, the boy she grew up with, now a man, who had never shed a tear is crying; the older immigrant Latino parents who have, perhaps more than their wounded mid-20s son, an appreciation for the emotion given on their son's behalf. No man in that hallway, walking or clapping, is ashamed by the silent tears on more than a few cheeks. An Airborne Ranger wipes his eyes only to better see. A couple of the officers in this crowd have themselves been a part of this parade in the past.

These are our men, broken in body they may be, but they are our brothers, and we welcome them home. This parade has gone on, every single Friday, all year long, for more than four years.

" Did you know that?

The media hasn't told the story."

Because this would not further the liberal left agenda, it will not be permitted to reach the American people who need to know the truth about the price being paid, and the dedication of our soldiers to the protection of our nation, our way of life, and the God given right of individuals to live free of persecution by those who would force their rule or religion of death on others.

Had a bad day?

Just in case you had a busy day, maybe things did not go the way you planned, you may have had a fender bender or lost an account that would have netted you some extra money.
It is possible the kids gave you a hard time getting ready for school, or you were aggravated at a phone call from your wife telling you your teenager failed an important class.


You may have been anxiously watching the stock market, planning your retirement, your wedding or building your new home.
Hopefully, you were not dealing with a hangover. I pray you are not planning on leaving your husband, or deserting your wife and kids because things are getting tough.

I know how hard it is to be away from your parents, cramming for upcoming college tests. I know the anxiety you suffer waiting for that phone call from the employer you hope to work for.




Maybe, you spent part of the day worrying whether or not you can afford the newest electronic game system for your kids.

Is it possible that today is one of those days that something got under your skin, and you got that 'it's just not fair' feeling? Maybe you lashed out at a friend or colleague because your vacation week was just canceled.












If you have felt like this recently, praise God that you are so fortunate. For many our strife would be a blessing;


You stay up for 16 hours,

He stays awake for days on end.




You start the day with a hot shower and coffee,

He has not seen running water for weeks.

You complain of a headache and call out of work sick,

He is shot at and sees others hit, and still moves forward.

You put on your anti-war, 'don't support the troops' shirt and meet up with your friends for lunch,

He still fights for your right to wear that shirt.

You check your cell phone twenty times a day,

He clutches the cross hanging on a chain next to his dog tags for twenty minutes as mortars and bullets fly over his head.

You talk trash about your buddies when their not with you,

He knows he may not see his buddies again.

You walk the beach looking at pretty girls,

He walks the street looking for armed insurgents and IED's.

You complain that the waitress got your order wrong,

He does not get to eat today.

You are aggravated when a baby cries,

He wonders if he will ever meet his newborn daughter.

Your mad because you class let out 10 minutes late,


He just learned he will be there 4 more months.

You go to the mall to get your hair done,

He did not have time to brush his teeth today.

You see what the media wants you to see,

He sees the broken bodies on the battlefield.

You criticize your government, and say war never solves anything,

He sees the innocents tortured and killed by their own people, and remembers why he is there.

Tomorrow, thank God you live in a free society, and pray for those who risk their lives to keep it that way.

Gasoline for the fire

Photo courtesy; Associated Press.

Where else could this come from but the hotbed of social liberal sickness that is the city of San Francisco.
Yesterday the health officials of this bastion of iniquity, announced that it is taking the first steps in the attempt to open a 'safe' drug injection room for users of illegal narcotics.
This brilliant idea is being sold as a viable answer to some of the problems created by drug abuse, according to the city's Department of Public Health.
The problems they hope to address? The high rate of deaths caused by drug overdose, the ever increasing financial burden on the city and state caused by the emergency response to care for these folks, and to help clean up the unsightly clutter of used needles in Golden Gate park.
As I listened to this on MSNBC, and read the article on Lycos News I was sadly shocked to realize that nowhere was there to be offered counseling and help to those addicted in this plan. After all, why ruin a good high with the glaring reality that our public officials have given up on those in need.
What this will accomplish is the removal of the problem from our immediate perception, and so less attention will be paid to addicts and their plight. We will be able to more easily go about our lives in our comfortable consciences, while the hopelessly addicted can trudge their way to a slower death out of the public eye. The benefits are tragically wonderful. As these 'safe' drug rooms will be a haven from the law, (it is planned that anyone using the service will be exempt from arrest and prosecution for possession of a controlled substance, as to encourage users to come there rather than shoot up elsewhere) police will be freed up from dealing with many drug related operations and paperwork. Dealers of heroin and cocaine will gain a legitimate place in society and see increased profits. The citizens of San Francisco can better sell their city and all it's vices to the rest of the nation, perhaps in it's public relations advertisements, a fun visit to the 'safe' drug room for a blast of H or coke can be marketed as a place to wind down, or rev up after a day at the Folsom Street Fair.
Perhaps best of all, money will be saved. Numbers of emergency calls to rescue overdosing addicts will sharply drop, along with their expense, thus giving a happily validating news bite to the left leaning media, who if this succeeds, may begin to pose the question, why do we fight a war against drugs? Then again, why fight against anything at all when it's easier to just give up.

Appreciation

October is pastor appreciation month. While we think about our church leaders all year round, this month is a time to give extra consideration to the man at the pulpit.
Hopefully we as Christians have a good relationship with our pastors, one that exceeds a handshake at the door after service, and sending a polite card at Christmas and Easter wishing them and their family blessings. While those things are good, and to be sure appreciated by the clergy, these men who have been called to a life of dedication to the preaching of God's Word deserve vastly more consideration for the daily sacrifices they make for their love of God, and the flock He has entrusted to their care.
We may not realize the sermon we hear on Sunday that takes in most cases an hour or so to speak does not take an hour to write, that the study and research done often takes days worth of hours to pen, and hours of prayer to discern, that we may be sure of receiving all that God gives to his servant for the filling of our spiritual bellies. These hours are labors of love, many that take up extra time that may be spent with a loving wife, or anxious children longing for dad's attention. Sometimes meals are missed, and quiet times of much needed rest or meditation fall by the wayside as evening's hours turn to night, while the man of God chisels in ink the art of exposition for our ears.
The responsibilities of leadership in a church go beyond the Sunday sermon. We see these men wedding couples, and leading funeral services, dedicating babies, and comforting the dying in their last hours, then comforting the family of the deceased for days and weeks afterward. There are baptisms, conventions to attend, speakers to hear, and travel to meet and know other men of the faith that serve God as His shepherds, that they may edify and encourage one another. There are also difficult times to face, agonizing over a fallen member of the flock, who needs to be found and brought home to the congregation, and church discipline to be enforced in the case of the unrepentant. There is persecution to be faced from the world, angry folk who will not hear God's word that the pastor works so hard to purvey accurately and Biblically, leave the church in anger and disagreement. Like prophets from the Old Testament, they are sometimes ignored, often despised, and even threatened with incarceration or death when willful sinners inflamed with conviction turn their shame to anger and seek a target at which to vent their rage, or a government's desire to keep social order at the expense of truth.
There are missionary commitments to meet, ministries to explore, and the walk of faith in Christ by Grace from God to display in all situations as an example to the flock, yet at the same time being only human, subject to every temptation, fault, illness and error we all are.
Include with this responsibilities of family and daily life. Mortgage, car payments, a sick child. Physical ailments, the passing of a loved one, car repair and flooded basements. Comforting the kids in their grief when the family pet dies, the need to care for an elderly parent that can no longer take care of themselves.
Take time this month to think on these things, and this Sunday consider the man behind the pulpit and the message he brings from God and his Word. Take the time to talk with him as you would any brother in the Lord, and let him know how much his labor means to you and how much you appreciate his loving service to our Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father.