Putting Things Together

This spring I’ve been amazed at how my son and my remodeler have put things together. Both are artists and craftsmen.

Zach is a music composition major at Drury University. At a recital in May, students performed two pieces he had created. It amazed me that a son of mine has such a musical gift. I can play notes on a trumpet and carry a tune, but how can he put together a score featuring piccolos, vibraphone, celesta and glockenspiel? Then do another composition incorporating flutes, clarinet, violins, guitar, cellos and double bass. It’s beyond me how his mind works like that. Indeed it’s God’s gift.

Equally impressive is the job that Melvin Hopke is doing at my house. How he can knock out a linen closet, toilet and shower and make hallways that connect exactly to the new addition. How carpenters, roofers, electricians, plumbers, drywallers can come in one after the other and with precision create a new living space with great precision. That’s something incomprehensible to my non-mechanical mind.

Of course some people have told me they have no aptitude for writing. That’s one of the few artistic endeavors that comes naturally to me. If God hadn’t granted that gift, I don’t know what I would be doing.

Marketing Savvy

I must hand it to Ruby Tuesday’s. A couple of years ago, just as the economy began to tank, the mid-level-price restaurant chain began an aggressive coupon campaign to get customers in the door in order to stay in business. The approach has worked. Whenever my wife and I dine there, which is once or twice a month, the place is nearly full. That wasn’t the case in early 2008.

Ruby’s has been sending me $10 coupons for the past couple of years. Essentially a couple dining out can get one full-course meal for free, or nearly free. The coupons have come in the local and national newspapers, direct mail and e-mail. The saturation marketing strategy has worked. Customers, especially middle-aged diners like me, love a bargain.

Kohl’s is another company that has adopted the strategy, blitzing my computer and mailbox with too-good-to-miss offers on shoes, suitcases, dinnerware and clothes. Other corporations would be wise to follow the plan of Ruby’s and Kohl’s if they want to stay in business.

The Obama Haters

Seeing the intensifying vitriol aimed at President Obama on the Internet grieves me. Unfortunately, much of the loathing comes from the keyboard of Christians, who, according to Jesus, are supposed to love their neighbors — and their enemies. The Apostle Paul also admonishes Christians in Scripture to pray for their government leaders.

I lived through all this enemy camp stuff in the 1990s during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but the presence of the Web has only ratcheted up the hatemongers. I admit I’m not fond of Obama’s abortion and gay-rights policies. But for the Christian, the answer is prayer, not verbal broadsides.

I’m talking about people who intentionally spread lies, such as Obama is a Muslim or that he canceled the National Day of Prayer. Such information, repeated without bothering to check the facts, only makes Christians look ignorant.

But the visuals are worse: People who put Obama’s picture with a slash through it, a “Nobama” meter declaring that there are only 1,000 more days until the president is out of office.

Such a fomenting environment reminds me of the South in 1963. John F. Kennedy had a lot of people who hated him. He went to Dallas to try to reverse some of that. I pray all the Obama bashing isn’t giving rise to such a climate again.

I hope Christians will stop all the incivility and disrespect that has become commonplace in politics. We’re supposed to be part of the solution, not the problem.

Without a Prayer?

Today, the first Thursday in May, is officially the National Day of Prayer. The occasion is marked in many communities by a breakfast in which a Christian speaker gives a talk before local Christians and local government officials.

Setting aside a day to pray has been a tradition in the United States since 1952. The communist scare of the 1950s inspired Congress to not only declare a day of prayer but to insert “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “in God we trust” to appear on paper currency.

That may have made Americans feel safe from the atheists back then, but increasingly non-Christians are vocal about any government sponsorship of religion. A couple of weeks ago, federal judge Barbara Crabb of Madison, Wis., ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.

Various Christians went apoplectic, believing such action surely foreshadowed the end of the world. I tend to see things differently. Why do we want the government to sanction a day of prayer once a year? Hasn’t it become spiritual window dressing, void of any real meaning? Are we so insecure in our faith that we need the government to tell is it’s a worthy activity?

I’m all for prayer, but why are churchgoers so interested in the state approving it? That seems backwards to me. The Bible repeatedly tells us we are to be different from the world, not cozying up to it. Isn’t this how Christianity got off track under Constantine?

The problem with defending prayer in official public settings is that it’s not really constitutional. In our multicultural society, can there really be a meaningful prayer to God in the name of Jesus Christ? Prayers uttered under the auspices of government have to be so inoffensive they really don’t have power.

How about if we pray to God in our churches and in our homes all the time. That way the petitions actually might be more effective. We won’t get the smug feeling that the government is patting us on the head. That’s a good thing.