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Looking For Hope


Hopes placed in mortals die with them; all the promise of their power comes to nothing. (Proverbs 11:7)
          OK, friends, it’s about to get political. If you put your hopes in Mr. Trump, or Mr. Obama, or Mrs. Clinton, or Mr. Sanders, or any other politician, you’ve put it in the wrong place and you’re bound for deep disappointment – at the very least when they lose whatever power they might have had. That’s the thing some people don’t understand about me. I voted for Mr. Trump, but I never had any real hopes that he would solve all our problems. That’s not his job. The best I hoped for was that maybe he’d get government out of the way so that we could work on the problems ourselves. As far as I’m concerned, it’s foolish to look at any political leader as a messiah, though I know lots of people who view every political leader that way. I know others who assume that anyone who votes for a political leader is a member of that leader’s cult. I think he’s doing pretty well (not perfectly) so far, but Mr. Trump is not what is going to make America great again.
         The first problem, of course, is that our hope should be in Christ alone. The second problem (and the cause of the first problem) is that every single human being, whether a leader or not, is flawed – deeply flawed. Following a flawed human leader is necessary, at least to some extent, and it doesn’t mean you necessarily approve of their flaws. But the third problem, which grows out of the first and second, is that at some point, any human leader is going to fail you in some way. If your faith is in them, your world will be destroyed. This happens in politics all the time. Someone is elected who doesn’t do everything the way everyone wants him/her to. Those who don’t get their way turn into ravening wolves, determined to tear apart this traitor to the cause, and look toward the next election, when they can vote in someone who will fulfill all their wishes and the cheer begins again “(Name, Name) He’s our man, if he can’t do it nobody can.” Until he fails, too. God is the only one who does not fail, even if we assume that what has happened is a failure.

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