Have You Thought of your Next Step?

I’m still getting used to the fact that we are in the New Year. The most obvious sign occurs when I write down a date. You know how that works: you begin to write down the month and year on a memo or to type it into a blog post as I just did, and what you get is: xx-xx-2009. Whoops! It’s January, 2010, isn’t it?

Which reminds me: Have you made any resolutions yet? I stopped doing that about 15 years ago and try to think about life in a more basic way. For example: Have you thought recently about your next step? No, no . . . I don’t mean what you plan to do next at work, or at home, or with your friends.

What I mean is this: Have you thought about your next step? Literally! That is, have you thought seriously about what happens when you put one foot forward, then the next, and then the other – repeatedly? As in walking. What is behind all that?

You must think that I am certifiably insane (you wouldn’t be the first). Let me explain. A person who decides to walk doesn’t go through an elaborate mental process of instructing all of the involved body parts what to do. A dedicated part of the brain handles that automatically.

I once remember walking up to one of my brothers who was wheel-chair bound and bending over so he could hear me. His first words were, “I wish I could do that.” The remark took me by surprise.

I, as you might have done, took the simple task of walking and bending for granted. We all do. That is, until we can no longer perform it. Just ask any handicapped person.

Which leads me to this conclusion: Some power greater than anything we can adequately visualize must have set up the rules. I call that power God.

Jefferson & God

I was prompted to write this after reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. That liberating document was written by Thomas Jefferson – and by golly, hold your breath, – the man actually mentions God.

He does it at the beginning and end of one of our most defining national documents, signed by some of the most courageous patriots in this nation’s brief history.

According to Jefferson, it was “…the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God (that) entitled” the colonists to declare the reasons which caused them to bolt from the mother country across the Atlantic.

Jefferson continues, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” among them, “. . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (there’s that God word again) with certain unalienable Rights. . .”

After a long, yet pithy and eloquent argument, the document concludes with a declaration that “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” That conclusion, according to Jefferson and his fellow patriots, is justified by “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” (Third reference to God.)

Now, I don’t want to get all syrupy about this, but I’d like to remind all those bright minds in all those Ivy League institutions, as well as all the politicians afraid of uttering that three-letter word beginning with a capital “G” of this:

Thomas Jefferson and all the other brave souls who signed the Declaration of Independence put their own lives, those of their families and their personal fortunes at grave risk when they did so.

And they were anything but afraid to identify the source of their inspiration. Those men were – in the absolutely correct sense and proper usage of the term – politically correct.

Just something for a few people in D.C. and elsewhere in The Public Square to think about.