It’s Election 2012 – as if we didn’t know. Wagging tongues, all around! Time to turn from politics-as-usual to a street corner prophet offering something extraordinary.
“Wisdom
cries out in the street,” the Proverbs writer shouts; “in the squares she" -- that's right, she --
raises her voice. At
the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: ‘How
long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight
in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? … I have called and you refused, (I) have stretched out my hand and (yet) no one heeded.”
Listen!
Wisdom is calling -- and stretching out her hand! Wisdom – found not in the politician’s butt-covering “middle
class,” but based primarily upon hearing the cries of the naked, the hungry … the hurting. Including
and especially God’s good earth, which cannot stand our torment much longer.
And
yet, are we really listening? For we as a nation of political posturing apparently
think it’s our call and God’s response that counts the most –
and not the other way around. Until, Wisdom adds, “they will call upon me, but
I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me. But” – and here’s the hope – “those who listen
to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”
“Those who listen to me will be secure”: Now, that
sounds like an international security state we can live and survive and thrive
with! Not the American-exceptional, worship of the middle class that spurns
God’s clear and primary concern for the loveless, and degrades the integrity of
God’s creation.
God’s tongue should be the one that is
wagging. And guess what? It is! As for our waiting ears? We have come to be
hard-of-hearing, as billions of “free speech” dollars pollute the
airwaves of our nation’s soul.
Midst the wagging
tongues of countless politicians in Election 2012, what will it take to turn our ears away from middle class greed and toward the common good that is of God?
