ON 9/11, when the second plane crashed into the tower, I was on the phone with my dad, in our last conversation.
He wasn’t on the plane or in the tower. He was in Akron, Ohio getting ready to leave home for hospice. He was dying of lymphoma.
The last words he said to me were, “I love you.”
He wasn’t a man who had said that to me a lot in my life. He spoke it in all the other ways.
I’m sitting here in my office thinking about that when I should be paraphrasing Ezekiel.
But I’m stuck in this moment of crossfire.
Here’s Dad’s love, settled deep into my heart.
But here, too, swirling around me is the hatred that has consumed this nation, led by the Father of Hate.
His brand of vindictive hatred is killing people. It doesn’t take a prophet to know where this is going. We know. We don’t want to admit it. But we know.
I don’t understand the attraction to such a human being. I can’t do anything to stop it. And I’m left wondering if there are enough people who care anymore.
God help us
May God help us, for it’s wrenchingly obvious that we Americans are no longer able to safely find our way out of this.
There’s a psalm about what it’s like to feel helpless, as many say they do because of so many corrupt national leaders who, at their worst, protect frauds, violent sex offenders, and even pedophiles.
For the seemingly helpless, there’s Psalm 46.
I wrote a song about it for that psalm in The Casual English Bible®, and plan to release it within the next several weeks. You get the sneak listen because it’s a message of hope and of triumph over hatred on a day when we remember what hate can do.
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