Everywhere I look I find chaos and waste. Political leaders in England and America leave a trail of scandals, fired executives, and failed polities, yet they carry on as if success is steady companion. Business leaders regurgitate the same rhetoric year after year claiming extraordinary compensation as the payback. Even when every financial and market measure goes against them they walk away able to retire on this payoff package alone!
What happened to the measures of success they taught me about in school? Is there any obvious reason why certain people make it to the top and others do not? Does being a leader give permission for abandoning every measure, standard, and principle that we as a society hold close to our hearts?
Wisdom says that “a leader of good judgment gives stability; an exploiting leader leaves a trail of waste.” (Proverbs 29.4) I believe this. Yet I wonder if this merely a politically correct way of saying that we live in a world where everyone is using others to some degree or another? Do we have a license to carry on the legacy of those in the past who had power? Is anything changing?
Yes, things are changing however not in the way anyone expected. The human thirst for stability which I define as the acceptance of one individual by another human being as equal is greater than at anytime in the past. Yet bigotry and violence of people on those physically like themselves is at an all-time high. The wealth and comfort achieved by many is at record levels. Yet the number who are starving and dying of incurable diseases defies out ability to count. The interest in divine subjects grows daily. Yet we search to find the Spirit that quenches our thirst.
Could stability be the experience that comes with a Divine connection? Is peace the result of union with the Spirit? Is compassion the impact of Jesus Christ? Yes, yes, and yes!
God is reaching out to you and me. People may fail us, the Spirit will lead. Christ defines all.
