Upon the Democrats taking over the majority of the Senate on Wednesday, Senator Schumer gave his “maiden speech” as the body's new majority leader. I especially note two comments he made.
This generational change raises a timely question. Are there things our society accepts today, perhaps for some even staunchly so, that in a generation or two America will realize were unacceptable and never should have been allowed?
The first is from his welcome to the three new Senators that gave them the majority. He recognized Senator Warnock of Georgia, “born while Georgia was represented in this Chamber by two staunch segregationists, is now the first African-American Senator Georgia has ever elected.”
Times change. I agree with this change. I cannot fathom what life was really like for people of any color to live in a world so explicitly divided by color. It seems one of the more exceptionally odd facts of history that states found it necessary to double their public water production and disposal engineering in order to separate people by two extremes of skin color. I know race has been a factor of division at other times in other places, but this is without equal. It is also without basis. I know of nothing in Scripture to suggest or require that people must use different plumbing pipes based on the color of their skin.
In his 1961 inaugural address, President Kennedy announced, “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century…”
What if one day, perhaps sooner than we think, it doesn't quite require the turn of another century before Americans can mark a similar distinct line of demarcation in American history? January 22, 1973 is a point at which one can draw such a line. Before that date, it was illegal to be killed in the womb. Since then it has not.
One of the saddest things I have ever heard a young person say to me is, “We're the generation that should have been aborted.” No. No, we are not. It is good our parents chose life. It is never good to choose death for any reason. That has always been wrong.
Most Members of Congress who defend the profit from the shedding of innocent blood were born before 1973. This includes even recent presidential candidates who were considered among the younger of the crop. Do they know? Do they know what it's like to have a mother who was told she's expecting, and also “You don't have to keep it”? Those who lived were the “it.” Millions have not been kept.
The second comment Majority Leader Schumer said that I want to note was, “That I should be the leader of this new Senate majority is an awesome responsibility—awesome in the Biblical sense, as the angels that tremble in awe before God.”
I agree. That may be truer than he realizes. I make no predictions in pre-emptive judgment of the man. I am not his judge. History is not his judge. God is his judge. I pray for Leader Schumer, that he would indeed “tremble in awe before God” “in the Biblical sense,” that he would know the Savior, that he would seek out what God's Word says, yield to it even in the midst of mighty pressure and strongholds, and seek to correctly punish those who do evil and praise those who do good.
As I mentioned a couple days ago about President Biden, Leader Schumer is going to need God's wisdom. I pray he seeks it, is given it, accepts it, and acts on it. In one sense that could be very costly to him in his current position. In another, there would be no greater reward than to truly serve the Lord where He has him in his Senate responsibility.
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