mobiles, politics and american lit

our daughter LOVES her mobile, and it is the most adorable thing ever.  she is currently in her crib just cooing away at her brightly colored little giraffe, monkey and ostrich as they spin and sing over her head.  precious.

so as i was feeding her this morning, i was thinking about all of the political speeches that i've seen over the past couple of weeks.  if you know my husband, you know how much he enjoys politics, so of course we've been spending our evenings watching the democratic and republican national conventions on CNN (because we don't get fox news anymore).  i really think the things that stood out to me the most are the "issues" that these politicians try to address.  and by "issues" i don't mean raising or lowering taxes, border control or anything so political as that.  what i'm referring to are the things that these politicians try to make us believe they actually sympathize with ... high gas prices, single parenting, expensive health care, outsourcing of jobs, etc.  and my problem is not that these politicians are being painfully fake in trying to relate to the "average American."  that's only to be expected, i think.  but as they rattle off their lists of problems that their presidency will surely fix, i cannot help but think how slight are our American woes.  we're worried about having to pay for gas to drive to work, but we take for granted that we HAVE a job and a car to get us there.  we're worried about affordable healthcare, but we neglect to acknowledge that there are hundreds of millions of people around the world dying because they have NO healthcare at all.  we find it difficult to raise children in a single parent home, but do we consider the orphans who have lost or been abandoned by their parents?  and i'm not denying that we do face challenges in America, but i just wonder how often we take off our rose colored glasses to see our lives in comparison with those in the rest of the world.  laura nutter told me one time that her mom says their family has been blessed in order to be a blessing.  undeniably, America has been blessed.  so i cannot help but wonder when we will stop looking for ways to make our lives easier and start to consider how to be a blessing to the rest of the world.

BUT, to let the politicians off the hook, jason and i are of the opinion that is it not the government's job to solve these social injustices.  it is not the government's job to care for the widows and the orphans.  that is the charge that Christ left with His church.  loving others to the point of sacrifice.  is that not the portrait of the church that we see in acts?  did they not sell their possessions to give to those in need?  and again i find that i come up short.

on a vastly different note, yesterday i had the privilege of teaching a poem by Anne Bradstreet, "Upon the Burning of Our House" to my four classes of eleventh graders.  Bradstreet was a Puritan, so she was crazy religious ... and i want to believe that she actually understood the gospel too.  she wrote this particular poem in response to her house burning to the ground in 1666.  i cannot imagine recovering from a house fire in 2008, much less in 1666 when you would have to remake everything--clothes, furniture, the house--literally by hand.  and in the poem, she spends a few lines discussing all of the things that she's lost and feeling sorry for herself.  but then she says:

"Adieu, Adieu; All's vanity.

Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide:

And did thy wealth on earth abide?

Didst fix thy hope on mold'ring dust?

The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?...

Thou hast a house on high erect

Fram'd by that mighty Architect,

With glory richly furnished

Stands permanent, though this be fled.

It's purchased and paid for too

By Him who hath enough to do.

A price so vast as is unknown,

Yet by His gift is made thine own.

There's wealth enough; I need no more.

Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.

The world no longer let me love;

My hope and treasure lies above."

so whenever i teach this poem, i get to preach a little bit, which is amazing!  i start the lesson by getting them to read the news article where Adam Gibson is quoted saying, "It's only earthly stuff; heaven can't burn down.  I'm still going there, no matter what happened to my stuff on earth.  No biggie."  and of course they think he's crazy.  then we read the poem, and i get to push them to see that she was so grateful for Christ's "gift"--His death on the cross--because it gave her hope that she had a treasure far greater in heaven.  i get to talk about the idea that we can't earn our way into heaven; it is only by God's grace that we have that hope.  i get to talk about how little our stuff here matters in light of what God has given us.  and i get to point out that even though Anne Bradstreet had these ideas in 1666, Adam Gibson still had the same ideas in 2004... so maybe there's something to it after all.    (one of these days i'm going to bring Adam in as a guest speaker because i feel like they imagine him to be more like Steve Urkle than Will Smith... who is his black counter-part.)  and i get to do this all within the setting of a public school classroom.  and as an added bonus, i usually have at least a handful of soul brotha's and sista's in the room who will give a hearty "amen sista" every now and again ... but that's just the icing on the cake.  :)