Days Journey

Last night I watched a special on CNN with presidential candidates John Edwards, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton.  It was entitled “Faith and Politics.”  The just of the program was to gain insight into the “faith” of each candidate.   What struck me was the complete disconnect between the candidate’s “faith” and truth.  Their “faith”, or personal way of approaching God was pictured as completed unrelated to any sort of ultimate and universal truth.  Each candidate was asked what they pray for, but none were asked who they pray too.   They could be praying to themselves for all we know.

What bothered me was the complete ignorance of the problem - that is, the lack of debate on the issue of ultimate truth.  In other words, none of the candidates, the moderator, or the audiences members seemed interested in what the candiates actually believed.  Further, they were not interested in how their “faith” would influence their decision making.  The whole program could have been an instructional video on post-modernism.

Tonight the Republican candidates are up.  I’m looking for more of the same.

Back in college, one of my professor’s used to precede a quiz, test, or sometimes the last class before the weekend with the phrase, “sufficient class…sufficient!” It took us a month or so to figure out what he was talking about and we kind of thought he rather enjoyed being vague anyway.
All that good old Prof. Cooper was doing was quoting Jesus (Matt. 5-6) from the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and the Lord’s Prayer (the Lord’s instruction to the Disciples on how to pray). The Lord said,

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (KJV, see also NET Matt. 6:34 “So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.”)

Over the years, what he said in those classes comes back to me much more than it did when I was back in college. Then, I was only really worried about doing well on a quiz, a test, or knowing that I’d be working on exegesis papers all weekend and had to get them turned in the first of the following week. Today, it’s a completely different story. Life, health, family, work, the challenge of priorities, deadlines, and you name it all challenge me to take my worries to the Lord, but just deal with it one day at a time. If the Lord tells me “sufficient Kevin, sufficient unto the day!” then I need to take heed. Yes, life, health, family , work, priorities, deadlines, etc. are all important, and we do need to plan ahead and number our days, but we need to take our worry to the Lord and find His grace in our time of need.

So class, sufficient! sufficient!