Today, Donald J. Trump will place his hand on the Lincoln Bible and take the oath of office to serve the American people as our 45^th President. I cannot remember a time in my life when a President has been the target of so many arrows even prior to taking office. I believe it’s important that Christians pray for him, just as we do for all of our leaders. It’s time for Christians to put aside party politics and be Christian as their first priority. President Trump deserves our prayers as encouragement to walk a path God puts before him and to do it with the strength of Christ, perseverance, and grace knowing that the path is one God chose and President Trump is simply one leader—a legitimate leader—because God put him there.

Way too many Christians don’t want to believe Romans 13:1-10 except when it applies the person they voted for. But that’s not how the Bible works, and it’s not what God says.  Real Christians read Romans 13:1-10 and know it means everyone submits and all authorities are established by God.

To all those government officials staying home from the Inauguration, I would recommend reading Romans 13:1-10 until it sinks in that what they’ve chosen to do is to dishonor God. To rebel against God. And just as God put President Obama in place for eight years to bring America to its current place, God has put President Trump in office to continue God’s work in America.

Make no mistake, we are not God’s chosen people. America is not God’s Promised Land. But rather, all nations are as a drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:13-31) and God uses our elected leaders to remind us that we cannot look to them. We must look to God for He is God alone.

Truthfully, I look upon President Trump with a great deal of sympathy. He’s a sinner just like me. He has stepped forward at a time in our nation to put his prior skills in business to use in order to help this country. But instead of cheering on the work that benefits us all, far too many of us have chosen to sharpen and gnash our razor teeth on anything resembling red meat thrown in our direction by political irreligious people and media types who want nothing but to tear him down. That behavior is ungodly and pathetic.

I have taken a few arrows in my time, but nothing like what President Trump has been experiencing. My heart is sympathetic toward him and my commitment in 2017 has been to pray for him every day without fail. To pray for his family—his wife Melania, his son Barron, and his adult children and their families. To pray for his cabinet, some of the best and brightest our country has to offer. And in so many cases, their lives would be easier if they were simply to sit on the sidelines and do nothing like the rest of us. Instead they’re sacrificing a lot to serve us and getting treated viciously in the process.

President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech called The Man in the Arena, spoke some very profound words about such heroes.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I have that quote on the bulletin board in my study to remind me of the value of my many failures and how critics will always criticize. Christian and critic only have a few letters in common and that’s about all.

Instead of choosing to do the devil’s work of stealing, killing, destroying…and rebelling against God by those very actions, Christians need to be Christians first and so I invite you to join me in praying for President Trump.

Father God, You alone are God. We praise You for the peaceful transition of power in the United States and for Your hand of grace upon this nation. We thank You for giving us a new beginning with a new administration and for the work we know You are faithfully doing in this country. We thank You for President Trump whom You have established because Your Word says You have. We ask that he will glorify You by being President of all the people in this country and that he will seek Your face and lead with Your wisdom. We ask for Your protection over him, that Your holy angels will establish a guard around him as he does the work You have prepared in advance for him to do. By Your grace, may they shield his family and preserve them from the legion of evil arrayed against them. We thank You for the preparation You have given to him in the business world and in communications so that he might lead with wisdom and love. We ask for Your favor and restoration when he fails and to restore his confidence in times he stumbles. We pray for Your strength when times get difficult, Your clarity when things seem unclear, for Your will to be done with energy and zeal, and that Your miracles would unfold, revealing Your goodness and love as answers to prayer by the many people who prayed Your will be done in the election. May the Gospel go forth into the nations as we take our light to the world. May we be known as a Christian nation, a people who look to You. Be with America, LORD. Be with Your people in the US and around the world. Be with President Trump and guide him for our good and Your glory. Be glorified in us and our actions, LORD. In Jesus’ mighty Name, Amen.

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This series on praying for our national leaders is archived beginning January 17, 2017 and included:

A Prayer for President and Mrs. Obama

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Pence

A Prayer for President Trump and Family

On Friday January 20^th just prior to the swearing in ceremony for President-elect Donald J. Trump, our Vice-President Mike Pence will be placing his hand on the Reagan family Bible, opened to the same passage the 40th US President Ronald Reagan used (2 Chronicles 7:14). It’s a passage of Scripture originally meant for God’s chosen people, the Israelites, but I love that the principle still applies to us today–that a nation which humbly seeks God and His ways will always find our God is willing to heal and forgive.  Isn’t God amazing?

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14 )

Vice-President Mike Pence will take the oath of office administered by our fellow Christian and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the first time an African-American justice will have been given that high honor.

It’s a beautiful symbol of racial healing and our oneness in Christ.

According to the Christian Post:

“President Ronald Reagan placed his faith in a loving God and the goodness of our country. He set out to change a nation and in doing so, he changed the world. In the march of history, Ronald Reagan’s time in office was limited, but his legacy inspired a generation and will continue beyond,” Pence said in a statement. “It will be humbling to enter office with President Donald Trump, standing next to my family, with my wife Karen holding the same Bible used by President Reagan when he took office.”

Christians, irrespective of political party, should rejoice that our next Vice-President and his wife Karen are both devout Christians. They deserve our kindness, not only because of the office the Vice-President holds, but because they belong to the family of faith. We should therefore avoid anything that tears down a fellow Christian in accordance with the Word of God which states emphatically,

Ephesians 4: 29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

We as Christians owe it to … Jesus … to treat our Christian brothers and sisters with kindness. We ought to pray for them because their job is hard, the opposition to God’s work is always fierce, and the task is one God appointed them to do for His glory.

It’s time for Christians to be Christians first.

Toward that end, here is a prayer for Vice-President Mike Pence:

We praise You, our Father in heaven, for Your establishment of authority and for Your wisdom regarding America’s past, present, and future. We thank You, Father, that You hear our prayers and answer them. We are grateful for Vice-President Pence and his wife and their love for You. We ask, LORD, during his tenure in public service, he would never fail to seek Your will for this country. We thank You for the sacrifice their family is making to serve the USA and for their obedience to You.

We pray for Your protection over them and their family. Guard their hearts against discouragement and give them strength to pursue Your will with whole and full hearts. Keep all evil from them, including the arrows of our adversary with words meant to steal their joy, kill their spirits, and destroy the work You have put them in office to do.

Thank You LORD, for Vice-President and Mrs. Pence’s service to this country, build them up, honor their obedience, and bless them with success as they faithfully pursue Your call.

Amen.

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This series on praying for our national leaders is archived beginning January 17, 2017 and included:

A Prayer for President and Mrs. Obama

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Pence

A Prayer for President Trump and Family

The next installment in our prayer for America’s leaders and our gratitude for their service, we offer this prayer for outgoing Vice-President Joe Biden and his family.  They too will experience the sudden departure from what has been normal life for the past eight years.  They deserve our prayers.

Why do we pray for our leaders? 

Well, the Bible instructs us that we pray for one another because it honors God and it pleases Him.  Furthermore, James tells us that prayer brings about healing and hope and the prayers of a righteous person are highly effective (James 5:16).  Beyond prayers for everyone, however, the Bible makes a special point of telling us to pray for those in authority, those who rule over us (see verse 2 below).

1 Timothy 2:1 I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone– 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior.

So here is our prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden:

We praise You, our Father in heaven, for the past eight years of Vice-President Biden’s leadership. You, O LORD, ordained it and we praise You. We ask that You would continue the work of healing the Biden family after the loss of Beau and would grant them a special sense of Your love, comfort, and peace. We thank You for the Vice-President’s devotion to public service and for his modeling of the fine art of friendship. We ask, LORD, that You would be with them, leading them to deeper knowledge of You. May your Holy Spirit guide them to works of charity and goodness so that their blessing to many will be an ongoing pursuit.   Thank You LORD, for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden’s service to this country and bless them in their future journey. Amen.

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This series on praying for our national leaders is archived beginning January 17, 2017 and included:

A Prayer for President and Mrs. Obama

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Pence

http://seminarygal.com/a-prayer-for-president-trump-and-family/

For any of us who have ever lost a job, retired, or left the workforce for parenting, illness, or another job, the sudden change is often difficult.  It doesn’t have to be bad in order to be an abrupt departure from one’s prior activities.  Changes like this are often difficult to manage.  Therefore, I believe the Christian’s responsibility is to pray as President and Mrs. Obama experience this time of transition. 

We praise You, our Father in heaven, for the past eight years of President Obama’s leadership. You, O LORD, ordained it and we praise You.  We ask, LORD, that what has brought glory to You will yield a harvest of righteousness, fruit that will last and provide a happy legacy for President Obama. We ask, LORD, that President and Mrs. Obama will find a blessed rest and freedom away from the burdens of leadership, that they will find refreshment in their love for each other and their love for Malia and Sasha; and they will be able to easily acclimate to life outside of the White House.  Be with them, LORD, and lead them to deeper knowledge of You and may your Holy Spirit guide them to works of charity and goodness so that they will be a blessing to many.   Thank You, LORD, for President and Mrs. Obama’s service to this country and bless them in their future journey. Amen.

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This series on praying for our national leaders is archived beginning January 17, 2017 and included:

A Prayer for President and Mrs. Obama

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Pence

A Prayer for President Trump and Family

This week marks the time in American culture every 4 years in which we either celebrate a second term of an incumbent President or welcome—in the tradition of our Republic—a peaceful transition of power. A passing of the baton in a race we all run together as Americans.

Why would our Republic allow for a peaceful transition of power? Well, our founders recognized this biblical truth:

Romans 13:1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

That means the past eight years have been established by God. It means the next four are as well and in both cases, it is true irrespective of how we feel or felt about it.

Why?

Because Christians and all others in the culture are supposed to honor that God-ordained establishment of authority. Moreover, I’d argue that a transition of public servants is more likely to be God-honoring because one obdurate leader more easily becomes a tyrant than ones with term limits.

For those Christians out there who are tempted with chants of “Not My President!” to consider a duly elected leader illegitimate or through harassment of fellow Americans, make them turn their faces from what is peaceful and God-honoring, my advice would be to think very soberly about what you’re doing. God says that the one giving in to such temptations is rebelling against God and we are only bringing judgment upon ourselves by doing it.

Romans 13:2 Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

See? I don’t make this stuff up.

Furthermore, this verse doesn’t apply only to those authorities we like. It isn’t like God says “Submit to rulers you like and those you don’t? Aw, forget it. No biggie.”

It’s a biggie. It’s a biggie because you’re basically saying you know better than God and trust me, you don’t.  I don’t either.  In fact, no one but God knows what God intends to accomplish through any ruler.  What do we know?  We know that God put that person there to do it. (Read Romans 13:1-8)

So this and the next 4 installments will be an invitation to pray for the outgoing leaders as well as those incoming. It’s what Christians are supposed to do as a peaceful transition of power in submission to God Himself.

Let’s pray: We praise You, our Father in heaven, that You know all things past and present, that You alone know the future, and where Your plan is headed. Forgive us, Lord, for failing to heed Your appointment of leaders and for finding faults in them. Too often using our words to harm other human beings knowing that our Lord and brother Jesus feels every insult we do and say against our neighbor. Please forgive us, Lord, for not using times of disagreement to bring our prayers before You for our protection, to gain Your  wisdom, Your grace upon us, and for strength to persevere even when we do not understand. Keep our hands from hatred and violence, and our thoughts from evil. Keep our souls pure. Guide us toward what glorifies You. Specifically, Lord, today we pray in agreement with Your Word, that You will allow a peaceful transition of power from Your prior servant to Your next servant and no ill will befall anyone who has come together to participate in that which You ordained. You are God alone. And we are thankful, Lord Jesus.  Bless us and bless our leaders. Amen.

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This series on praying for our national leaders is archived beginning January 17, 2017 and included:

A Prayer for President and Mrs. Obama

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Biden

A Prayer for Vice-President and Mrs. Pence

A Prayer for President Trump and Family

After nearly eight full years of an historic presidency, President Barack Obama has had his farewell tour with a speech in Chicago, final interviews as President, and awarded his last Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor to a lifetime politician, his Vice-President Joe Biden. Now what? In Biden’s prior reflection upon his impending retirement, “’I’ve never been gainfully employed in my life,’ he said as the audience laughed. ‘I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.’”  All humor aside, what do you do about your legacy when all you’ve done previously comes to an end? What does retirement mean? Is it truly the end? Or just a new beginning?

Is it merely a page turn in a book that’s still being written?

I’d argue that retiring TO some activity or FOR IT is far better than retiring FROM something. TO and FOR are future and filled with hope and promise and excitement. FROM sees life in the rearview mirror with a degree of sadness that what you loved has ended. I don’t know about you, but my lifetime achievements won’t be done until my life is.

The Bible’s Qohelet reminds us in Ecclesiastes 9 there is but one destiny that awaits all the living (and I’d add unless Christ should return first but Qohelet can be forgiven because he lived before Jesus Christ was born). That reminder? Life is full of opportunity and hope!  Embrace it!

Ecclesiastes 9: 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope–even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. … 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

Verse 10 is good advice for retirement. As long as there is breath in your lungs, you have good and productive work ahead of you, even if it will change as your age and physical condition permit. Same book, different page.

• I hope and pray that President Obama and Vice-President Biden will find freedom from the snare of power. Its pull is unrelenting. It’s a lust to be sure. I pray they will find useful work to retire to, work that will help and inspire and give them joy as a stronger force counteracting the pull to selfish ambition and power.
• I pray their work will be to use their former positions to roll up their sleeves, bring attention to a genuine need, and get their hands dirty in a worthy cause of helping the less fortunate to good and godly ends. It’s a better retirement goal than criticizing and tearing down one’s successors.
• I pray that President Obama and Vice-President Biden, and their families will throw their energies into building a lasting and notable legacy of goodness and productivity, one that will reflect the privilege they know they were given for a time and the grace to acknowledge the page turning on their legacies from power to charity.

Qohelet’s perspective would serve them well, including what follows in Ecclesiastes 9: 11 I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. 12 Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them…17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools. 18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

Time and chance … and page turns … happen to us all. 

Embrace the simple work of goodness, the hidden beauty of charity, and the quiet words of wisdom in retirement. 

Then, living life will be a very good thing, seeing a beautiful blank page full of promise just waiting for us to roll up our sleeves and make the most and the best of every opportunity! 

Continuing this rumination about legacy and fame and how selfish ambition can destroy one’s soul, I will share with you something about my approach to information. I go to the Bible first. It’s my compass, in this case to distinguish a good desire for success from a not-good lust for fame. And then I go everywhere in search of the truth for comparing against what the Bible tells me. I have certain media outlets that arrive uninvited to my news feed on my laptop, others uninvited to my phone, and I have others I will intentionally visit. But then there are ones I must dig to find. Such is the case with a quote about fame I heard while watching an interview with Glenn Beck on Tucker Carlson’s new show on FOX.

Before some of you ditch this post because of Beck or FOX, keep in mind that without hearing both sides of current events, a person only gets one side and often ends up getting it wrong. Glenn Beck said something very profound and if one only watches CNN or sees the auto-newsfeed chosen by Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Apple, one would miss this transcript statement that I eventually found on AdWeek’s online site

BECK: “I think this job, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t wish the fame on my worst enemy. I think fame is more corrosive than anything else. It is a horrible, horrible thing if you don’t have perspective.”

That perspective reflects what my first source, the Bible, says about fame as selfish ambition:

Philippians 2: 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

PJ Media describes Carlson’s interview this way, that it was a…

“doozy…with conservative rabble rouser Glenn Beck, and the host didn’t hold back when it came to questions about faith, the nature of God’s calling, and the fickle nature of fame, among other topics. Carlson started right out of the gate asking Beck a tough question:

CARLSON: Over the past year and a half, nobody has argued more forcefully or more fervently against Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy than multimedia veteran Glenn Beck. … At one point he predicted that four years of the Trump presidency would lead to civil war or worse … So where is Glenn Beck on all of this now?”

[my note:  Time and reality had given Beck some perspective, which is a good thing.]

Beck concluded his recollection … by stating that he is “not going to endorse anybody ever again.”

Later on in the interview, Beck waxed philosophical on the nature of fame. When Carlson asked Beck if he would recommend the news business to his kids, the founder of The Blaze noted that the desire for fame is unhealthy and leads to a false sense of sanctimony.

At the end of the interview, Carlson asked Beck, “How do you avoid that (i.e. falling prey to fame)?”

Beck said,

You get out the minute you want it. The minute you want it you will start making pacts with the devil.”  Carlson: “When you want fame for its own sake?” Beck: “Yeah”

Refrigerator magnet wisdom as lauded by Carlson, and here’s further truth about fame: the Bible calls “wanting it” selfish ambition and vain conceit and tells us “Don’t.”

Just don’t.

CNN had an opinion piece recently that’s right on the money. It’s called “Facebook has created a monster it cannot tame” about the live streaming function and the horrific and gruesome having no space and distance between any monster’s camera and any audience’s eyeballs.

This feature—in the hands of the godless—is a monster.

An evil genie that will not go back into the common decency bottle.

A Pandora’s Box of selfish ambition gone amok and evil spreading unfiltered at light speed.  

What social media has accomplished (via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even online up-to-the-minute news sources) is to shorten the fuse between fire and explosion. It’s instantaneous.  Defamatory words, lies, and insult can no sooner leave the speaker’s lips or laptops than they become firmly lodged in the minds and hearts of the readers. It’s the dark side of the online disinhibition effect for individual communication, the removal of boundaries of feedback by perceived anonymity, and it can even display itself as fake news for dissemination. You know, what used to be called defamation and slander.  Lies for the purpose of harming other people.  The Bible talks about lies and false reports as evil (Exodus 23:1). 

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me?  Oh yes they can and with social media’s Pandora’s box, there’s no time for a conscience to intervene.

Evil can be perpetrated now in real time. An insatiable quest for fame, a new thrill, a bigger outrage drives some people to do the unthinkable and project it for the world to see as their selfish ambition becomes the next Internet sensation. It’s like the person acting out in the classroom to get attention that they couldn’t get through excellence…amplified exponentially…and revealing the darkest recesses of an evil heart.

It’s up to you, the viewer and the reader, to be careful what you take in to your mind and bring into your home.  It’s a monster that threatens your legacy.

Christians, as a temple of God, we ought to be more mindful like many of us were taught in that children’s Bible song, “Be careful little eye what you see…”

I am harping on this idea of legacy because I believe we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg as the most evil of selfishness is unleashed upon a society of rubberneckers and gawkers. The same motivation that causes gapers delays on the Interstate is at play in the viral nature of what is evil being witnessed by everyone and anyone.

I have not watched any of these viral videos of beheadings, torture, and death. I don’t think you should watch them either.  Why?  Because I don’t want to become a monster of my own making. Would you?

I believe what enters through one’s eyes and ears can change a person, even desensitize them to the world of evil. We don’t need to witness aberrations and atrocities (and by doing so on social media feed and fuel their future) in order to know they exist. Christians, be wise about what you’re partnering with in your access of media.

2 Corinthians 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?

Baiting tomorrow’s monster to get attention has no place in the Christian heart after evil worms its way through the eyes and the mind.

For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” 17 “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” 18 “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

Instead of using the glorious opportunity of being awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement and using that acceptance speech in good and productive ways, Meryl Streep chose to have her legacy be one of arrogance and sniping bitterness. Meryl Streep’s speech will go down in history as a missed opportunity.

That’s a pity.

A few throwaway lines about empathy displaying that when she’s not acting, she apparently has very little, if any.

It’s all an act. 

Meryl Streep’s speech was both an opportunity and a legacy squandered.

* * *

Here’s the speech I WISH she’d given:

I love you all. You have to forgive my reading my speech. Sometimes in life there are no words for the sobering gratitude for such an honor bestowed on such an unworthy person as me.

A lifetime achievement might seem like a lot. But my lifetime’s not over and my legacy is one historians of Hollywood have yet to finish writing. Just like yours. But who are we and, you know, what is Hollywood, anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places who have been gifted and privileged to be on TV or the silver screen—a privilege whether it be for a flash of genius or a lifetime of powerful performances.

To be recognized by the Foreign Press and the company of your peers is deeply humbling. And I have no words to express my sincere gratitude.

So I will use the remainder of my time to say that we’d be nothing without the people of this world who watch us on the screen as we portray the lives of people not so different from them. As Shakespeare’s wisdom in “As You Like It”—“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts.” Or Walt Whitman’s immortal words recalled by one of our own, the late Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society: “The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

The people of this world who endure the unthinkable, who see tragedy upon tragedy, who experience the horrors of war, the violence of the streets, the passions of love lost do so–not on a silver screen and for fame or recognition or money–but as their real lives. Yes, they also know the raptures of joy, the satisfaction of a job well done, the beauty of life, and the pride of accomplishment as their powerful play goes on, and they contribute their verse to this thing called life.  Their verses are real yet never receive the celebrity that ours do. 

For them, life is real and day after day in an endless stream…far too often, their stage offers them nothing but a new worry.  They look to us to be a place of blessed relief when life gets too hard. So let us honor them.  Let us be the kind of community that honors their lifetime achievements, telling their untold stories of hope, perseverance, and inspiration, of beauty and brokenness, of redemption and healing. Or as my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”

We can offer back to them a voice, as my friend Bette Midler sang,

• From a distance
• The world looks blue and green
• And the snow-capped mountains white
• From a distance
• The ocean meets the stream
• And the eagle takes to flight
• From a distance
• There is harmony
• And it echoes through the land
• It’s the voice of hope
• It’s the voice of peace
• It’s the voice of every man

Yes, with the right perspective, my dear friends, we can be that harmony and offer that hope. We can share a verse that exalts the very best of ideals.  We can be that peace. And through our craft, we can be that voice of every man.  Thank you, America the beautiful.  Thank you, world blue and green. And thank you, Foreign Press, for this tremendous honor.

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And for comparison, here’s the text of Meryl Streep’s speech,  the one she actually gave:

I love you all. You have to forgive me, I have lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend and I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year so I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said, you and all of us in this room really belong to the most vilified segments of American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press.

But who are we and, you know, what is Hollywood, anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey, Viola was born in a sharecropper’s cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls,  R.I. Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio, Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates?

And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in Lon – no, in Ireland, I do believe, and she’s here nominated for playing a small-town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patelwas born in Kenya, raised in London and is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania. So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

They gave me three seconds to say this, so. An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, compassionate work.

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart, not because it was good, it was – there’s nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.

It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege and power and the capacity to fight back. It, it kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.

Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. OK, go on with that thing. OK, this brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.

That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood foreign press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, ’cause we’re going to need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.

One more thing. Once when I was standing around the set one day, whining about something, we were going to work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me: “Isn’t it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?” Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight,

As my, as my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”

Thank you, Foreign Press.

Continuing in this short LEGACY series, let’s look today at a life of significance.  One of my favorite movies is Moneyball which got good ratings—a 94% from Rotten Tomatoes–but even that doesn’t reflect all the great messages and sermon illustrations one can get from it that speak spiritually and theologically. There’s a quote from Billy Beane in response to his assistant Peter Brand who is trying to be an encourager, insisting that they just won the record and to focus on how they’d just won big league!

Billy Beane: Listen, man. I’ve been in this game a long time. I’m not in it for a record, I’ll tell you that. I’m not in it for a ring. That’s when people get hurt. If we don’t win the last game of the series, they’ll dismiss us. I know these guys, I know the way think, and they will erase us. And everything we’ve done here, none of it will matter. Any other team wins the World Series, good for them. They’re drinking champagne, they’ll get a ring. But if we win, on our budget with this team, we’ll change the game. And that’s what I want, I want it to mean something.

To mean something. A life of significance is not the same as a life of fame or records.

What do you want? Fame. Records. Legacy-building.

Significance?

Ultimately what I want is to know that my life had significance, that it meant something.

That someday (when I meet Jesus face-to-face) to know I won’t show up with empty hands and empty pockets and have nothing to show, no fruit to my credit (John 15:16). That I used a lot of oxygen and water in my time on earth and expended a lot of energy, but my legacy would still be judged by God as one of little significance…that I would have been she of little faith (Matthew 6:19-34). That I really never approached all He’d hoped I’d do because I didn’t put forth the effort or exhibit the kind of faithfulness I could have. That in my shortsightedness and ignorance, I’d waited for Him to go the direction I wanted instead of my going His way.

Ironically, that’s why fame is so appealing. It’s tangible reward for the work done. You can see it, touch it, and know it. And you don’t need faith (ouch) to know that you’re making an impact. And for famous theologians, pastors, or Bible teachers, you don’t really need to doubt that there’s probably fruit somewhere out there.

Andy Warhol’s line introduced last time has this interesting history:

In February 1968 Warhol exhibited his first international retrospective exhibition at the Moderna Museet gallery in Stockholm. The exhibition catalogue contained “In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” It is far and away the best-known of the many quotations attributed to Warhol, in fact it is probably the only comment of his that most people know.

The line began to bore Warhol in later years when interviewers kept asking him about it. In 1979 he did repeat it though, claiming that the line had truth – “my prediction from the sixties finally came true: In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

As things have turned out the rise of celebrity culture and reality television in the Western world since then has shown Warhol to be quite prophetic.

Social media only makes matters worse with everyone engaging in selfie-ism in hopes of going viral. Click, Like, Comment, Share. Make your selfie go around the world and be like Jim Benton’s Happy Bunny: “It’s all about me; deal with it.”  Fifteen minutes of fame? What for?

I’m not in it for that. I want my life to mean something to Jesus, so I take it seriously:

This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples…You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit– fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.  This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:8, 16-17)

What about you? What do you want out of this life?  Significance or something less?