A ruminant is an animal that chews its cud. To ruminate is to sit back and reflect on yesterday’s happenings. Here are some I’m chewing on this Monday morning….

“What I Told Billy Graham”

As you doubtless know, they are soliciting birthday greetings for Dr. Billy Graham on the occasion of his 90th birthday which took place last week. How they will sift through a half-million notes and e-mails is anyone’s guess. What do you want to bet a book will be produced with the hundred most interesting?

In my note, I reminded Dr. Graham of the time in November of 1987 when he and George Beverly Shea and a couple of other friends sat in my office for an hour and a half, as we waited for the start of the afternoon funeral service of his longtime colleague, Dr. Grady Wilson, who was a member of our congregation (FBC, Charlotte, NC). I told him, “As we sat there, I found myself having a little inner conversation that went like this. I asked myself, ‘Do you pray for Billy Graham?’ I answered, ‘People all over the world pray for this man, but I’m only one person.’ I recall laughing at that and thinking, ‘Well, hotshot, do you know anyone who is two people? We’re all only one.’ Ever since, I have prayed for you!”

Incidentally — this is to our readers now and not what I said to Dr. Graham — I’ve been working on a missions sermon this week, and the Lord brought that incident to my mind. When it comes to the Lord’s work, many of God’s people excuse themselves from doing anything significant because “I’m only one person.”

The sermon could be entitled “I’m just one, but….” And it would work out to something like this.

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I’ve been enjoying a book on Abraham Lincoln from the hands of Brian Lamb and the good folks at C-Span. Called simply “Abraham Lincoln,” the book is a collection of brief chapters from various authors/historians on the 16th president.

This Friday morning, waiting in my doctor’s office for my periodic post-cancer checkup (“You’re fine. Come back in 6 months”), I came across insights about two men near Lincoln, both making similar points.

General George McClellan was put in charge of the Union forces early in the Civil War. Allen C. Guelzo writes that McClellan was an outstanding general in many ways. “He built a wonderful army. He was a great organizer, a tremendously talented engineer. If management consultants had existed in 1860, his was the resume that every management consultant in the country would take as an example.”

“There was only one problem,” Professor Guelzo writes. “(McClellan) didn’t like to fight, which is a strange thing for a general.”

A fatal flaw, I call it. It’s what caused Lincoln to sack him. McClellan did not seem to realize that the whole point of building a great army was to engage the enemy. Guelzo adds, “He might have been a genius, but he was not a genius for achieving victory.”

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With everything inside me, I detest this kind of conversation, but I’m going to give it a try. I’d like to pour oil on troubled waters. If it turns out I’m just stirring them up worse, I apologize and will drop this.

So, you’re upset that Senator McCain lost the election and that Senator Obama won. You cannot believe that any Christian who cares about God’s Word and Christ’s glory and society’s survival would vote for Obama. After all, he’s pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, and pro-a lot of stuff which “normal” Christians do not go in for. On top of this, Obama sat under Jeremiah Wright’s teaching all those years without a murmur of discontent and only disowned him when the public learned of the poison that pastor was spreading.

You’re so upset you’re emailing your friends around the country despairing over the foolishness of the American electorate.

You believe people were just voting their pocketbooks and not their convictions in rejecting McCain and choosing Obama. You are upset that Obama is the most untried, green, mysterious president-elect in history. You worry about what this nation is coming to.

Me, too. I voted for McCain.

However, I have several thoughts I’d like to call to your attention.

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In our Wednesday morning pastors meeting, I asked the African-American pastors how they were feeling after Barack Obama’s win last night. All answered with variations of, “Great!” One told me privately, “I feel the American people got the presidency back.” Another said, “I don’t just feel great for my people. I feel great for America right now.”

I rejoice with these friends and determine to pledge our new chief-executive my faithful prayer support. In fact, these are the most important days to pray for the new leader, when he’s making crucial decisions regarding his staff. Those who didn’t care much for Bush’s staff (Cheney, Rove, etc) will be the first to admit how critical it is that the president choose wisely. So much of the success or failure of his administration will be determined by the quality of the men and women with whom he surrounds himself.

One of the things I admire most about Senator and now President-elect Obama is his unflappability. Throughout this marathon campaign — far too long and much too costly — we’ve seen the candidates in every kind of trying situation. At no time did I see Obama lose his temper and come unglued. With the relentless attacks and unreasonable charges flying in all directions, that’s as good a compliment as I know how to give. He was as cool under attack as anyone I’ve ever seen.

The Wednesday edition of the Times-Picayune carries a feature about Bo Pellini, the first-year football coach at Nebraska. Lately he’s been losing his temper on the sidelines and cursing out his coaches and players. The reporter said YouTube has been playing excerpts, to the consternation of Cornhuskers far and wide. Someone in Bo’s family who can read lips confronted him with the way he is losing his cool and demeaning his colleagues and players. He admits to being chastened. “I’m working on my temper,” he claims.

Coach Pellini did not ask me, but I can tell him how to conquer a temper. I’ve been there.

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I voted at 6:30 this Tuesday morning, at the end of my walk on the levee. An hour earlier, I slipped my driver’s license into my jeans and donned my glasses so I’d be able to read the ballot. A classroom at John Curtis Christian (elementary) School is our site. Usually when I walk in, there might be one or two other voters. Today, I stood in line with maybe 30 in front of me.

Our Baptist Center on Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans is the polling place for a number of precincts that were put out of business by Katrina three years ago. Today, our auditorium boasts 24 voting machines. When I arrived at the office at 8:30, several lines stretched outside the building and across the lawn. I estimated 200 people were waiting to vote outside, and perhaps nearly that number inside. Incredibly, down the street a block, the Episcopal Church, also a voting place for several precincts, was just as crowded.

The Times-Picayune this morning ran a couple of pages of photos of citizens, identifying who this one is, what he/she does for a living, where they live, and whether they are voting for Obama or McCain. After glancing at it, I went back and checked. Sure enough, every African-American was voting for Obama and every paleface was voting for McCain.

At my voting place this morning, I was struck by the heavy percentage of African-Americans in line. This part of town — the community is River Ridge — is thought of as majority-white, but it certainly did not look like it this morning.

I think it’s great. I’m delighted that the voter turnout today may end up being as high as 80 or 90 percent. It’s about time, is all I can say.

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“So, how are things in New Orleans?” I was asked several times Sunday. I was the guest preacher at the First Baptist Church of Andalusia, Alabama, some five hours from my house. From similar situations in other churches I have learned to come up with a quick answer to that question. Even assuming they have a real interest in the rebuilding of this city, no one has time for an in-depth 30 minute monologue.

“Anything you say about New Orleans right now is true,” I tell the questioner. “Parts of the city are lovely and prospering. Parts are being rebuilt, and some of the city looks awful, like a bomb has gone off. We used to have 135 churches. One month after Katrina, we had 35 still operating. Today, we have 100, some of them brand new, some prospering, and some struggling.”

The response to that is generally the same. “Oh, well, then you’re doing great, sounds like.”

I say, “Yeah. We’re doing great. Thanks for asking.”

Nothing snide about that answer. It’s the truth, assuming one also understands that the rebuilding of this city will continue for another quarter-century barring any further hurricanes.

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, when floodwaters were inundating most of this city and St. Bernard Parish, the awful phrase we heard again and again was “toxic soup.” It referred to the fears that the liquid under which our city was drowning was not just water, but a stew of water plus oil and sludge and who knows what else. Experts led us to fear about the health of the city after the water receded and we were able to re-enter.

Now, we learn there was no “toxic soup.”

In fact, the EPA has said the contamination of the city’s soil “did not get any worse from Katrina.” Which begs the question, of course. Just how toxic was the soil before the hurricane?

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Help me out here, please. This is only the beginning of this message, sort of “off the top of my head.” I’d love to have your stories and insights at the end.

I’ve told here of the wonderful West End Baptist Church in Birmingham that in 1959 befriended this 19 year old sophomore from the local Methodist college (Birmingham-Southern). The youth of that large church, most of whom had known one another since infancy, welcomed me as though I’d always been a member of the group. The adult leaders of the church learned my name and spoke to me like I was somebody. I blossomed like a potted plant moved from the closet into the sunlight.

And you may recall my telling how three or four years later, I watched that same church try to implode. The lay leadership, well, some of them, were in an argument with the pastor over cancelling the Sunday evening radio broadcast. Money was the problem–the lack of it, of course–and the church needed to either give more or cut expenses. Why in the world someone did not go to the congregation and preach a rousing message on “laying up treasure in Heaven” I’ll never know. Instead, they took out their pruning shears and began whacking. The question was whether in cancelling the radio broadcast, they were cutting essential services. The pastor said “yes” and the chief laymen seem to have said “no.”

So, in the time-honored way of Baptists through the ages, they held a business meeting, which I attended. It was well-attended (a fight will always bring out Baptists) and the tension was hot. The issue had long since grown beyond whether to cancel the one-hour broadcast and had morphed into personalities and methodologies and even theologies.

The tragedy for this kid preacher was watching people I dearly loved and to whom I owed so much verbally abuse and accuse one another for a solid hour. Regardless how the vote turned out (they canceled the program), you knew there would be no winners of this prize-fight except the enemies of all that is good and holy.

Something died in that church that day: the fellowship. That incredible church was never the same thereafter.

Which leads me to blame as a culprit for murdering the fellowship bull-headedness (on everyone’s part) and out-of-control egos. Or, to put it another way, when God’s people forget how to submit themselves to one another and to work to preserve the peace of Christ in the fellowship, all bets are off.

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