Yesterday I was on a teleconference with President Obama and House Speaker Boehner. They wanted my advice on the fiscal cliff. I gave it, they agreed, and today you can expect them to announce an agreement.
Yeah, right. The situation is grave and anyone who carries the title “citizen” should be on the line…to God. Christians talk about stewardship. President Obama and Speaker Boehner and their parties are in fact stewards of the wealth and uncounted resources that You, O Lord, have given to our country. Like the prodigal, we have spent and will leave only an inheritance of debt to our children. Like the man who built his house on sand, we have leveraged our lives and now the storm comes. Yes, Lord, You have let us live our prodigal way, “see how well you do without Me,” but here is our hope, You are awaiting our return. Our governments have lived as if we are unlimited gods but now we ask for grace to live as the people we truly are, finite, not infinite creatures of a day. We have not modeled good stewardship to our citizens and now we reap the whirlwind, our fiscal house crashes down. On our knees, transform these troubles, we pray, O Lord, into our national and individual blessing.
“If any be distressed, and fain would gather some comfort, let him haste unto ‘Our Father.’
For we of hope and help are quite bereaved, except Thou succor us, ‘Who art in heaven.’
Nothing we have to use our debts to pay, except Thou give it us. ‘Give us this day’
wherewith to clothe us, wherewith to be fed. For without Thee we want ‘Our daily bread.’
We want, but want no faults, for no day passes but we do sin – ‘Forgive us our trespasses.’
No man from sinning ever free did live; Forgive us, Lord, our sins, ‘As we forgive.’
If we repent our faults, Thou ne’er disdain’st us; we pardon them ‘That trespass against us.’
Forgive us that is past, a new path tread us, direct us always in Thy faith, ‘And lead us.’
To these petitions let both church and nation, with one consent of heart and voice, say ‘Amen.’”
(Starck, 530)
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