June 29, 2020 (Monday)
In the supplementary blog tomorrow there will be a discussion of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States. The series about the presidents arose from a private project of my own as I attempted to memorize the list of presidents, vice presidents, dates, etc. I am glad that I can say that I reached the goal but I also must confess that I must review the list often because facts slip away from my memory.
I wrote a series of blogs about our 45 presidents, one by one. I decided to use them weekly as a supplement to the regular blog. Only five will remain as subjects for blogs after tomorrow. I discovered that my feelings about the presidents who served before I was born are different from the feelings I had when writing about the presidents I knew about personally.
I have no trouble understanding that the presidents serving during my lifetime were human beings, subject to mistakes and far from perfect people. Writing about them all led me to the conclusion that every single one of them, from the first to the most recent, has been an imperfect human being. The times in which we live have elevated each president to the status of being “the most important person in the world.” Our expectations of our president are so high that no one could possibly measure up to the perfection we expect. We must pray for our president, whoever that may be at any given moment of history.
The Apostle Paul taught us in Romans 13 that God has put our civic leaders in place and we should pray for them. As I considered that fact, suddenly it dawned on me that he was talking about the Roman Emperors, one of whom had him beheaded. Paul insisted that we pray for our leaders, not because they are such good people, but because God has put them where they are.
In 1976, our country’s bi-centennial year, the choir of First Baptist Church, Rockport, performed the patriotic musical, “I Love America.” Everyone loved it. There was a spirit in the air of thankfulness for citizenship in the United States of America. Suddenly we were reminded that we live in the greatest country in the world, and we should do all we can as Americans to keep it that way. Next weekend we will celebrate the birth of our nation once again. Let us do so with thanksgiving in our hearts for the privilege of saying, “I am an American.”