Resisting the Ultimate Sin

There is a stand of maple trees along the path I take to work, and the fiery red-orange of their leaves is the only relief from the gathering winter grayness. In a few weeks they will fall away, leaving the horizon of my little world stark and bare until spring. This time of year is a special challenge for those of us who are prone to melancholy. It isn't the rain, for I get used to that quickly. A pair of sturdy hiking boots, a thick sweater and knit gloves and a stocking cap are all that's needed to maintain equilibrium: not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, moving forward until I get to work or home. My coworkers are kind people and more days than not I get a ride partway. Sometimes I'm embarrassed at their generosity.

Nothing, however, relieves the grayness. This is the time of year when it's dark in the morning when you leave for work and dark when work ends, and it has the effect, if you let it, of suppressing your imagination, turning you into a joyless drone that merely sleeps, works and consumes food, a creature of sloth and gluttony. But the ultimate sin is indifference, not seeing those glorious red leaves, the forest and the trees, and not accepting the generosity with a gracious thank you.

Years ago Paul Simon wrote a song that sticks in my head every once in a while. "These are days of miracles and wonders--this is a long distance call." These ARE days of miracles and wonders: have you ever stopped to watch a jet plane land or take off, and stopped to think what a miracle of invention and discovery it is? A hundred and fifty years ago we were traveling across the country in horse drawn wagons. Indeed, it's been 56 years since the invention of the hydrogen bomb and frozen peas, 128 years since the patent for the first cash register was issued, and now I have a tool under my fingertips to reach the whole world in half a second. Remarkable.

The march of time and history is inexorable and wondrous. In early November 1842 Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield Illinois. In September of 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that a black man could not be a citizen and a slave could not become a free man. Fast forward another hundred years to the early 1960's, and men were burned and murdered in the fight to register African American voters. And today a black man has been elected President of the United States.

Martin Luther King once said:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.'

Barack Obama has now won the hardest job in the world, a job two dozen men and one woman spent 150 billion dollars trying to win. It's not my argument to decide whether he was the best choice or the right choice, but now that he has it, I hope he does it with the passion, conviction and artistry of Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Beethoven, and the wisdom of Lincoln. The country faces an extraordinarily difficult moment in its storied history, with two wars to conclude and a faltering economy, a nation divided red and blue, and he will need all of that to govern well. May God grant him grace and wisdom, and save each of us from the sin of indifference.