Broken Lives! Broken Homes! Broken Families! Broken Relationships! Broken Hearts! People and Things that are broken are everywhere. Disruptions in the ebb and flow of life is becoming too common place. Disregard for values and valuables is lost amid the prevailing self-centeredness. The ability to care is suppressed and the need to be someone, somewhere has surfaced. The rampant slaughter of people in other nations; the disregard of the environment; the mounting abortion rate; the decline of charitable concern and giving – these and many other symptoms are realities.
How can we shift from where we are to where we need to be? How can the thinking of young and old alike return to the basic decency and values of and for life? Part of what is in the air is arrogance on one hand, and a sense of abandonment (giving up) on the other hand. A commentator stated about our President: “His intelligence is only exceeded by his arrogance.” Can it be that the population feels or believes they are losing far more than they are gaining in 2009? Are lives filled more with uncertainty than they are with hopefulness? The Homes, Savings, Investments, Retirement, Care for the Aged, Integrity, etc. are all slipping away and the future is just one large and glaring Question Mark?
Last Friday (July 24, 2009), Peggy Noonan wrote in her column entitled: “COMMON SENSE MAY SINK OBAMA-CARE”: “I think the plan is being slowed and may well be stopped not by ideology, or even by philosophy in a strict sense, but by simple American common sense. I suspect voters, the past few weeks, have been giving themselves an internal Q-and-A that goes something like this: Will whatever health care bill is produced by Congress increase the deficit? “Of course.” Will it mean tax increases? “Of course.” Will it mean new fees or fines? “Probably.” Can I afford it right now? “No, I’m already getting clobbered.” Will it make the marketplace freer and better? “Probably not.” Is our health-care system in crisis? “Yeah, it has been for years.” Is it the most pressing crisis right now? “No, the economy is.” Will a health-care bill improve the economy? “I doubt it.”
And then she summarizes about unnecessary intrusions: “Let me throw forward three other things that I suspect lessen, or will lessen, support for full health-care reform, two of them not quantifiable. The first has to do with the doctors throughout the country who give patients a break, who quietly under-bill someone they know is in trouble, or don’t charge for their services…People are afraid of losing the parts of the system that sometimes work—the unquantifiable parts, the human parts. Second, and this is big, some of the bills being worked on in Congress will allow for or mandate taxpayer funding of abortion. Speaking only and narrowly in political terms, this is so ignorant as to be astounding…The third point is largely unspoken but I suspect gives some people real pause. We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of…let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next…So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not…” Compassion and care will be absent - self-centeredness and self-assertive will be present.
Puzzlement seems all-too-natural these days. A turning point in the campaign of Bill Clinton came when he said to a questioner: “I feel your pain!” Today we get the sense: “You really don’t have pain – I have a program to pass!” Broken Hearts and Disregard/Disrespect are realities. What is the only sure hope for the disenfranchised and the brokenhearted? In PSALM 34:18, we read: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” I hope the Lord acts quickly in this regard – I know some who are enduring the disappointment, discouragement and a broken-heart right now! The government cannot help in this regard, but neither should they compound one’s life with added burdens, costs and loss. Puzzled by it all? Yes! Hopeful in the Lord? Absolutely! Consider these things with me!
How can we shift from where we are to where we need to be? How can the thinking of young and old alike return to the basic decency and values of and for life? Part of what is in the air is arrogance on one hand, and a sense of abandonment (giving up) on the other hand. A commentator stated about our President: “His intelligence is only exceeded by his arrogance.” Can it be that the population feels or believes they are losing far more than they are gaining in 2009? Are lives filled more with uncertainty than they are with hopefulness? The Homes, Savings, Investments, Retirement, Care for the Aged, Integrity, etc. are all slipping away and the future is just one large and glaring Question Mark?
Last Friday (July 24, 2009), Peggy Noonan wrote in her column entitled: “COMMON SENSE MAY SINK OBAMA-CARE”: “I think the plan is being slowed and may well be stopped not by ideology, or even by philosophy in a strict sense, but by simple American common sense. I suspect voters, the past few weeks, have been giving themselves an internal Q-and-A that goes something like this: Will whatever health care bill is produced by Congress increase the deficit? “Of course.” Will it mean tax increases? “Of course.” Will it mean new fees or fines? “Probably.” Can I afford it right now? “No, I’m already getting clobbered.” Will it make the marketplace freer and better? “Probably not.” Is our health-care system in crisis? “Yeah, it has been for years.” Is it the most pressing crisis right now? “No, the economy is.” Will a health-care bill improve the economy? “I doubt it.”
And then she summarizes about unnecessary intrusions: “Let me throw forward three other things that I suspect lessen, or will lessen, support for full health-care reform, two of them not quantifiable. The first has to do with the doctors throughout the country who give patients a break, who quietly under-bill someone they know is in trouble, or don’t charge for their services…People are afraid of losing the parts of the system that sometimes work—the unquantifiable parts, the human parts. Second, and this is big, some of the bills being worked on in Congress will allow for or mandate taxpayer funding of abortion. Speaking only and narrowly in political terms, this is so ignorant as to be astounding…The third point is largely unspoken but I suspect gives some people real pause. We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of…let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next…So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not…” Compassion and care will be absent - self-centeredness and self-assertive will be present.
Puzzlement seems all-too-natural these days. A turning point in the campaign of Bill Clinton came when he said to a questioner: “I feel your pain!” Today we get the sense: “You really don’t have pain – I have a program to pass!” Broken Hearts and Disregard/Disrespect are realities. What is the only sure hope for the disenfranchised and the brokenhearted? In PSALM 34:18, we read: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” I hope the Lord acts quickly in this regard – I know some who are enduring the disappointment, discouragement and a broken-heart right now! The government cannot help in this regard, but neither should they compound one’s life with added burdens, costs and loss. Puzzled by it all? Yes! Hopeful in the Lord? Absolutely! Consider these things with me!
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