Psalm 51

(An excerpt from my journal this morning.  i had time, or i made time, to truly break down a passage.  Use it if it helps, toss it if it doesn't.  Grace and peace.) 

“Be gracious to me,”  Petition.  Ask.  Right to the point.  Grace.  Unmerited.  He knows he is asking for that which he does not deserve.  He is asking for a positional response.  A pose.  An attitude toward himself from God Most High.  YHWH.  The Almighty.  The Holy, Holy, Holy one.  To me.  Personal.  Not corporate.  He believes God Most High can be approached by something as lowly and sinful as men, and more, as a man.  Each of us may come.  He will listen.  He hears.  He cares.  He is willing to turn His face to us and extend open hands to us, why?“according to Your loyal love.”  Because it is His predetermined position.  Because He has promised to.  Covenant.  This is His sworn attitude, sworn by Himself since there is nothing higher than He to swear by.

“According to Your abundant mercies,” all of this presupposes knowledge.  God has revealed Himself to us so that we might know of His works and His nature and base our faith upon this rock, this unchanging character of God.

“blot out my transgressions.”  And because we know He is Holy, we know our sin is offensive and a complete hindrance to our relationship with Him, and that He is the only one who can effectively deal with them and because of His nature, we can trust that He wants to.  And so we appeal to Him.  

“Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and from my sin cleanse me.”  Sin stains.  Sin is repugnant.  Sin needs cleansing.  Metaphorical.  For sin also needs uprooting.  It goes deep.  But we are cups to Him.  He can wash both the inside and the outside.  

“i, i know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”  Now.  i was not so aware of them before when i was doing them.  i might have been if someone had pointed them out then or slowed my roll but here we are and i have done the vile deeds, the unforgivable deeds.  Indeed!  i cannot ever seek forgiveness from Uriah for i have had him slaughtered by the hands of immoral enemies of God.  O wretched man am i, who will save me from this body of death?!

“Against You, only You, i have sinned and have done this evil in Your eyes,”  all sin is against God.  He takes all sin personally.  He so identifies with Uriah that in essence, David murdered God’s son.  He so identifies with Bathsheba that David raped God’s daughter.  Jesus so identifies with His people, that David raped and murdered Jesus.  David has set God’s children on a dangerous path.  David has corrupted the head of God’s people, what can the body do?  David has polluted the whole loaf.  God’s bread is rotten.  

“so that You are correct when You speak, You are blameless when You judge.”  No one can accuse God of wrongdoing.  Of overreaction.  Of sticking His divine nose where it does not belong.  There is no line between the sacred and the secular.  There is no private and public sphere.  There is nowhere, nothing that God does not see and declare as His own.

“Behold, in iniquity i was born, and in sin my mother conceived me.”  Original sin.  Born of a sinful race.  There is no need to speculate that David was illegitimate or some other such thing.  All humans are sinners from birth, doomed by Adam.  Doomed to the same fate as Adam.  Condemned under the law.  This is why God can order the death of children and be guiltless.  How does that then jive with every man dying for his own sin?  Again, Father, is a child innocent up to the age of reason?  How do you judge children?  How do you judge the unborn dead?  Are their children in heaven?

“Behold, You delight in truth in the inward parts,” repentance and worship start within.  

“and in the hidden parts You make me to know wisdom.”  God sees the heart.

“Purify me with hyssop,” usually used in levitical rites to sprinkle blood of sacrifice.

“and i shall be clean.  Wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow.”  The purest form of water.  White.  Pure.  Holy.  Clean.  Jesus.  

“Make me hear joy and gladness;” cuz right now i am in despair.  Everything is dark to me because i am not right with You.  Everything is evil to me because i have lost communion and right relationship with You.  All is ruined.  All is fallen.

“Let the bones You have crushed rejoice.”  Agony to celebration.

“Hide Your face from my sins,

and all my iniquities blot out.”  Cuz this is the issue.  

“Create a clean heart for me, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”  i used to have these things.  i used to enjoy fellowship with You.  i used to think first about You and meditate upon You and enjoy You and delight in You and somewhere i became darkened in my thinking.  Low.  Bestial.  Again though, this isn’t something i can do for myself.  i need You to do it.  You did it before.  i didn’t deserve it then.  Let it come again.  

“Do not cast me away from Your presence, “even though it burns me.

“and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.”  For i need it!  i must have it!  Do not forsake Your child, daddy!

“Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,”  when i delighted in Your favor, i knew why, i had been saved from hell, i had been chosen of God, i had been raised up from death to live with the Holy One of Israel in His palace temple as His beloved child.

“and with a willing spirit sustain me.”  Keep me alive, keep me going, keep me cheered by Your presence, by Your reciprocal spirit within me.

“Then i will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will turn back to You.” because i will be an example to them of Your forgiveness and mercy and love.

“Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,” in case anyone doubted i knew what i had done and what the consequence and justice of the deed demanded.

“the God of my salvation,” in case anyone doubted i knew what i was asking for and from whom.

“then my tongue will sing aloud of Your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will proclaim Your praise.”  i am hoping for a new song to sing.  i am desiring to add not just verses to songs of my knowledge of You from before but entirely new songs because You have revealed so much more of Yourself to us in this salvation than we knew before.

“For You do not delight in sacrifice or i would give it.”  You do not delight in the death of the wicked. You are not bloodthirsty.  It is not in blood of animals, beasts, sinners in which Your wrath is quenched.

“With a burnt offering You are not pleased.”  As if burnt flesh and hair could mask my sin.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;”  truth in the inward parts.

“A broken and contrite heart,

O God, You will not despise.”  Right position and attitude toward You.  True honor and humility.  True knowledge.

“Do good in Your favor toward Zion.”  The place where God dwells with men.

“Build the walls of Jerusalem.”  The holy city where God dwells with men.  The people of God.

“Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, burnt offering and whole burnt offering.”  True worship.

“Then bulls will be offered on Your altar.”  We cannot get You back with our offerings.  It is only when You have come to us that there is any point in our worship.  Our worship is a response, not a bargain.  Not a ransom.  Not a bribe.  But a celebration.

On war.

 *Authors note: i had thought my next post was going to be a defense of the first Adam but other topics rose to the fore and so instead, here's an open letter i wrote to my eldest son in response to a conversation we had last night about Israel and Hamas.  i don't know if it's wise or just an outdated, antiquated viewpoint of a fading generation, i only know it's what i think.

Ah, thoughts that come in the middle of the night.  Ah, answers that come long after the conversation is over.  :)

A few thoughts on war and the nature of war.  Wars are not only and some would say, not really, won on the battlefield.  They are won in the will.  Yes, soldiers go fight but they must have the collective push, they must feel the people they represent behind them leaning with them into the traces, the whole nation must be willing to do what it takes to win.  Sacrifice to support the effort, not give up till its over, believe in the cause.  This is why the narrative is so vitally important.  This is why governments curate the information.  Censorship and propaganda.  What news gets out.  What news do we give.  Keep this in mind.  It is key to understanding much.

In the forties it was much easier for governments to do this.  It explains why Hitler and Hirohito and Mussolini were able to create cults of fanatical people convinced of their own racial superiority and therefore right to rule and were able to start the war in the first place and why they were able to keep fighting the war even when the tide turned against them and it became defensive.  It explains why when we were finally able to take the war to these nations and show their people what the awful cost would be, they, eventually, lost their will to keep fighting.  But it was atrocious.  

The other thing to keep in mind is that war is evil.  All war.  It is the unleashing of hell upon the earth in order to achieve a goal.  All sane men try to limit that unleashing but there is no way around it, it is pure violence.  To break the will of the people, we use violence (and propaganda) to change the narrative of their leaders.  Which means waging war on the general populace.  We annihilated Germany.  We razed Japan.  The fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were horrific and killed thousands of civilians.  Women.  Children.  But unlike the Italians who read the writing and surrendered early, the Germans and the Japanese were more fanatical.  More trusting of the narrative.  The Germans were sending nothing but old men and underage boys to the front by the end because that is all they had, they would have fought to the last man or so they thought, and so we had to wage total war on them.  The Japanese were even more culturally convinced of their need to fight until their own annihilation due to bushido and the samurai cults.  And so we let loose the ultimate destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And their will finally broke.

But here’s the question to ask yourself: would we have had the will to do all of that, to win the “last just war” as people call it, if the modern free press and television, and smart phones and the internet had existed then?  If our people had seen the suffering of the people of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hiroshima, would they have had the stomach to finally eliminate the armies and leaders that had started the war no one asked for and committed the death camps and the rape of Nanking?  i don’t know, but what i do know is that news and media changed war.

The other thing about this is winning the war MUST be followed with winning the peace.  After WWII we did not abandon Germany and Japan.  We used our own resources to rebuild them.  We won over their people with our care of them and our true intention of helping them.  And the crazy thing is that it worked!  Those nations did not become fermentation beds of future wars.  They became stable nations in an increasingly global world.  And its interesting to see how this contrast played out in Berlin and Germany.  Divided between the Russians and the West.  The same generals and airmen who once bombed Germany into oblivion were tasked with trying to airlift enough food to feed a besieged city when Russia tried to starve out West Berlin!  And they did it!  It’s an amazing feat to this day.

But the stage was set now for the Cold War, and we see now how wars changed from Korea to Viet Nam, the first true war showed in living color on American tv sets every night.  How the government no longer controlled the narrative and even the attempt to do so made them look like the bad guys in the eyes of many.  Guys like Nonno to this day still don’t know what happened.  We were America.  We were the good guys.  The police of the world, so convinced of our own power and the nobility to wield it for the right reasons that we must.  And here he was being shipped home to a nation who hated him, called him baby killer and the such.  Who slammed doors in his face when he tried to visit the relatives of the friends he lost there.  There will probably never be another war that can be fought with such monolithic fervor as the ones of old.  But maybe not if they are won quickly as in Afghanistan and Iraq.  There we lightning fast won the war but never had a plan for the peace and so it dragged out into an occupation.  One in which we are all holding court over every little nuance and detail that makes it out, not knowing any better than our ancestors which ones are true and which ones are spun or even entirely false.  The media savvy ones will win the will regardless of who wins the battlefield.  Hearts and minds control the purse strings.  A people who no longer believe in their government or their cause will not join the military.  In this kind of arena terrorism makes sense in its own pitiless economy.  And they have convinced enough hearts and minds of their own to support their cause.  It’s not just that some men want to watch the world burn, it’s that, yes, they do, but maybe more importantly, they also know you don’t.  

Independence Day

 (From my journal this morning.)

2023 07 04,

Independence day.  

Father, on a certain day, i do not know the day, You made me independent from sin and this world.  On a certain day, i do not know the day, You bought me out of slavery.  On a certain day, i became free from death, an everlasting death which i was doomed to by my father’s sin and by my own.  But my independence is not freedom as the world sees it.  It is a new kind of slavery.  It is a new kind of service.  It is a new kind of being owned.  i have a new master.  i came out of the Republic and entered into the service of the King.  The King who adopted me.  i am not just his slave, i am His son!  By the death of His Son, in the power of His resurrection, i am free!  Kill my body and my soul will fly to Him.  And on a certain day, i do not know the day, my body will be freed and my soul will rejoin it and they will be recreated into glory.  Free from the grave, free from sin, free from sickness, free from pain, free from loss, free from misery, free from evil, free from suffering, free from hopelessness, free from confusion and angst and worry and hate and greed and selfishness and wretchedness and unrighteousness and anger and woe and lust and envy and coveting and pride and ignorance and murder and theft and adultery and godlessness and idolatry and violence and poverty and discharge and leprosy and uncleanness and suspicion and hiding and wrongdoing and war and rape and grime and filth and parasites and sweat and stains and misunderstanding and decay and defecation and deformity and ugliness and judgment and tiredness and exhaustion and lethargy and weariness and the enormous crushing, soul-dragging weight of everything there is to do here which cannot possibly be done and yet is expected.  i will be free of other people’s expectations.  Mom will be free of Alzheimer’s.  Abby Ledford will eat, and digest, and not die, her own body will stop attacking her.  We will be free of doctors and physicians and nurses and needles and machines that beep incessantly.  We will be free of lawyers and legalese and contracts and disclaimers and fees and the protection of words on paper.  We will be free of cheating and taking advantage and usury and predators and vileness and miserliness and money.  We will be free from misunderstanding each other, the Gospel, You!  We will know You.  No one will claim the office of prophet.  No one will claim the office of priest.  No one will claim special revelation.  We will be free of self-aggrandizement.  We will be free from politicians and megalomania and monomania and power seekers and back room deals and covert ops and spy agencies and lobbyists and special interest groups and political action committees and parties and patrons and donors and corporations and syndicates and unions and bought influence and bribery and slander and lies and lies and lies.  We will be free from need and hunger and thirst and the harmful effects of the sun and cancer!  We will be free from impotence and barrenness and childlessness and stillbirth and miscarriage and sudden infant death syndrome and suffocation and mental illness and no bone will break, no skin will bleed, nothing will cut us or stab us or rupture or break or tear or rend or break down or strain or pull or stretch or cease to function.  We will be free from apathy and lack of love and though i’ve said it before, it bears saying again here, selfishness.  We will be free from a lack of empathy and sympathy and pathos and we will never again sit in another’s presence desperately wanting to connect with them and know them and care about them but have no words.  We will never meet a stranger we do not love and want to know all about.  We will never again be a stranger whom no one notices.  We will be free from loneliness and isolation and awkwardness and cliques and teasing and bullying and power struggles and bias and prejudice and distrust and pariahs and fear and xenophobia and alienation and desertion and neglect and being cast out, cast away, cast off or the wrong caste.  We will be free from our misunderstanding and wrongful ideas of love, for we will know Love.  God is love and perfect love will drive out our fear and our false loves and we will be free of them.  Free to love.  Free from all impediments, fears, hesitations, self-defense, wariness, caution, reasonable safeguards, boundaries and fences and walls and fortresses and hurts and wounds, emotional, physical, spiritual, free from abuse, free from trauma, free from the word trauma, free from psychology and psychiatry and drugs, illicit and prescribed, free from escapism, free from coping mechanisms, free from the desire to flee, free from false utopias, free from narcissism, self-loathing, self-absorption, insecurity, overconfidence, personality disorders, self-care, self-help, self.  Free from self.  For nothing will surpass the all encompassing delight of knowing You and being in Your Very Presence!  There, there true freedom resides.  That is our future and our hope.  That is our ultimate destination.  That is the reality that puts the lie to this world.  That is true independence!  Let freedom ring!  Come Lord Jesus!

Duo Equinoxia: Part 2: Herald the Dawn

 The Vernal Equinox.  Light overtakes darkness.  New life.  New year.  Rebirth.  Resurrection.  Night retreats.  Days lengthen.  Snow melts, rivers swell, farmers plant, flowers bloom.

We have a dry erase calendar in our kitchen to mark events.  Usually it just has dates and birthdays and upcoming appointments.  The other day though, i looked at it and was struck by the quick succession of blessing upon blessing we had made note of in bold, vibrant, multi-colored all caps, one for each week.  As surely as September had been rife with pain, March has been joy upon joy, blessing upon blessing.

Only two days into the month my dear friend who had suffered so much including the seizure last September was quite unexpectedly and suddenly released from jail!  He was sent home on house arrest and work release when such things that we had so prayerfully hoped for at his sentencing seemed entirely off the table.  He was home before letters i sent were able to get to him.  He was in only long enough to develop a heart for the men inside and sense a new calling on his life: prison ministry.  Though he'll wear an anklet and be severely limited in his freedoms, he will gladly serve his time knowing when this ends, the sword that had been hanging over his head for years, incarceration, uncertainty, a chain around every plan he made, every dream he dreamed, every hope he had, will be gone.  The prisoner was called out of the dark dungeon into new life!  Glory be to God!

The following week my wife and i celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary.  We didn't do anything special.  We had a good meal in a nice restaurant but otherwise it was just a day off.  But what the day represented, the fact that we were still married to see it at all is a miracle only the God of Grace could pull off!  Behind us are years, YEARS of strife and anger and tears and talk of divorce and pain and misery.  But God being rich in mercy and according to his great love for us is able to do more than we ask or imagine, and here we are, not just together but in love!  The sweetness being all the more dear for the long dark years we have walked, limped, crawled through.  i cannot thank the God of redemption enough!

The very next week, still days away from the equinox, my eldest son and his lovely wife welcomed into the world their baby girl!  My very first grandchild had to be cut out of her mother but God is good and mother and baby are doing great and we are overjoyed!  We could not love her more and just the image of her every time i open my phone is enough to set my heart to skipping over mountains.  New life!  New joys!  New loves!  Thank You, Father!

What does it all mean?  i surely don't know.  i have no great theological points to draw from these two months and these events.  i just feel like God was drawing my attention to them in the ways they were ordered and clumped together.  Drawing attention to what He was doing.  He was faithful and true and good in the dark, he was near, we sought him in our tears and in our laments and in our confusion and storms and He was there, He was our Rock and our Refuge and our Comfort and at times even lessened the blows from what they could have been.  i am reminded we have no right to expect good from this world or this life, we have not earned it, nor do we deserve it.  Death comes to us all and sometimes before it does we get tastes of it, glimpses, previews.  Sin has made all darkness and unless the Light come into the world, the dark would swallow all.  

But the Light has come!  And built right into the rhythm of the seasons and the rhythm of life are the story line of the Gospel!  Redemption and forgiveness not in spite of death, not as a consolation alongside death, but right through death itself!  Christ used his own undeserved death, the only man who did have a right to expect nothing but good from God, took the wrath we deserve so we would not have to!  So we could enjoy the good things He deserves and expect even more!  And here we are, coming up on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox, the time of Passover, the time when the Lamb of God without blemish, His only begotten Son, was sacrificed for us and then rose again to show us who He is and what He's doing, making all things new!  Come Lord Jesus, Come! 

Duo Equinoxia: Part one: The gathering dark.

 The Autumnal Equinox.  The dying of the light.  The day on which Night overtakes Day for supremacy.  The darkness grows and dawn takes longer and longer to arrive.  The Sun retreats to the horizon and can only seem to shine weakly for what little time it has.  As the Equinox approached last September, my family received shock upon shock, we knew it at the time, we were aware that it was a hard, dark, pummeling season but even looking back on it we marvel at how many painful things happened in so short a time.  

At the beginning of the month, my brother made a rare trek up from North Carolina because we were becoming aware that my mother was exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's. We were aware that she was forgetting.  That's how i had always thought of Alzheimer's: as forgetting.  We went out to dinner while my brother was here and mom's credit card was denied.  She always handles the finances for her and my stepfather so we assumed that she had forgot to pay the bill.  But in looking over the statement, my brother discovered she had been giving away thousands of dollars to scam charities and political action groups for months and when we tried to talk to her about it the rational, reasonable, college educated, intelligent woman we have always known, the rock of our family who raised us became an angry little girl who could not tell reality from delusion.  We had thought she was forgetful but we had no idea how the disease had warped her inner dialogue.  How it had become full of imagined conversations she had with people she'd never met.  In a moment when we thought we were losing our mother, the correction came like an axe in the middle of the table, our mom, the mom we knew was already gone.  Two men who had grown up together but never grown together were suddenly closer, maybe clinging a little harder as they felt the loneliness of losing our family.  A child is never too old to feel like an orphan when their parents are taken from them.  We strategized, made a plan and the reunion turned out to be a sweet time for each of us.  A gift of memory and redemption i would have cause to be amazingly thankful for in only a few weeks.

Days after my brother went back home, i got a text at work.  It was a picture of my son's truck and the front end was nearly torn off.  My eldest runs a lawn mowing business and he and his brother and a friend of theirs were all in the truck on their way to their first yards of the morning when a man ran a stop sign and broadsided them so hard it my sons's brand new, full size, crew cab, F-250 and trailer loaded with two zero-turn mowers, did its own zero turn 180 degrees in the span of an intersection to end up facing the way they came.  i cannot fathom the force that takes.  A tragedy worthy of Job was mitigated by God's grace and as it happened, the man who hit them got the worst of it, he was unconscious and we never found out what happened, who he was, why he was out running stop signs at seven in the morning, all we learned was that he had no insurance.  My sons and their friend were left with bumps, bruises and burns, sore joints that linger even still, the loss of a vehicle but compared to what might have happened had the impact point been the passenger door... i dare not even contemplate.

Days later, literally, we were still in only the second week of September, at Bible study a dear friend and brother in Christ started appearing ill and calmly informed he was going to have a seizure.  Now i've heard of those all my life but never actually saw one till then and i'll be very happy to never see another.  Here was this man who's life already defines affliction and tragedy losing control of his own body and there's nothing we can do to help but hold his hand and witness and pray.  Truly this world is broken, Father, come quickly Lord Jesus!  The seizure has its way and does its violence and passes on like a storm with nary a care for the life it tosses in its wake but if it shakes me just to witness it, what must it do to the helpless victim?

Four days later again a morning at work was interrupted by my brother's (yes the same brother, i have but one) wife calling to tell me in the matter-of-fact voice of a person in shock and holding on to the hard facts they know to keep from thinking about the future they no longer have any assurance of, that my brother is being airlifted to a hospital with a trauma unit.  He had borrowed a friend's brand new Harley to ride to work and was just getting out onto the two lane and up to highway speed when he ran headlong into a deer, was flung from the cycle, his head, neck, shoulder taking the brunt of the landing.  Life went on hold.  i finished the day but the next we were in the car heading south.  A trauma ward, a coma, again, a body no longer in control of itself.  Eyes fixed at nothing.  Unable to breathe without machines.  Sudden arrhythmia that would shake him and make his vitals drop.  We kept watch by my brother's side, holding a hand that had the warmth of life but none of the vitality or motion, not knowing if he would ever wake.  And if he did, to what would he wake?  What would the damage be?  Who would he be?  

Equinox in North Carolina.  Night overcomes Day.

He ain't heavy...or is he?

 In a world where everyone is a sinner there is no possible community, true, loving community, without dying to ourselves and laying our lives down for the good of the other.

There is no possible way to die to ourselves and lay our lives down for another without pain.  Without loss.  Without absorbing and being willing to absorb damage!  Innocent as doves, yet being willing to be afflicted both for and BY another in order to gain them.  In order to love them.  In order to one day see them and the community healed, whole, shalom.  To sometimes suffer long years in silent service for nothing more than the hope that God may use it to change their hearts or simply because we love them, and we would rather be hurt ourselves than stand by while they hurt themselves.

Are we willing to jump on a grenade for ...anyone?  Who do we love enough to sacrifice for?  Our family?  Our church?  Our neighbors?  The kids down in Sunday School who need teachers?  The "difficult" guy or girl that few people like?  Our sibling who still just doesn't get it and keeps dropping grenades in their own lives?  

Our society is largely rich enough to make many historic forms of suffering a choice now.  If you have enough resources, you can quite often avoid wholesale many forms of pain and trouble and hard work that our ancestors took for granted and therefore learned how to live with!  We lost a lot more than the ability to suffer when we became unwilling to.  We may have even lost the ligaments of community.

My version of Imagine

 "Therefore, I urge first of all that petitions, prayers, requests, and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all people, on behalf of kings and all those who are in authority, in order that we may live a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable before God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony at the proper time, for which I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am speaking the truth, I am not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger and dispute." 1 Tim 2:1-8

Oh that it should be so, Lord! Oh that your people were of one mind, one heart, one body! Oh that we with one breath, and that of the Spirit, plead with you for the lives of our families, the lives of our neighbors, the lives of our nations! That we would beseech you on behalf of all people everywhere! The small and the great. The servant wench and the general. The head of state and the lowliest beggar child. The leper and the supermodel. The athlete and the lame. The junkie and the CEO. The billionaire and the single mom on food stamps. What if we all, with one voice, cried out to You and tore our clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and fasted and denied ourselves until you heard from heaven and it rent your heart and you could not bear our sorrow any longer? What if the church actually was the church, your voice here on earth, your heart here in the midst of the people, in the midst of a lost world? What might You do then? What miracles might we see in our day?

This is my version of that inane song, Imagine.