The Worst Of All Time

"I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13

(The following article may be my opinion...but there are certainly a LOT of presidential historians who agree with me!)

If you ask any American in any setting to name the greatest President, he or she might have a hard time identifying just one.  Our country is very fortunate; we have had many great Presidents, and many of the others have done great things - while not always getting the credit they deserved.

But if you ask that same American to name the worst President of all time, he or she might not even hesitate to answer.  

Any conversation about the worst American President is bound to anger or frustrate someone.  In modern times, just about every President was loved or hated; there wasn't much middle ground.  If this conversation involves someone with a calm demeanor, he or she might admit that even a hated President might have some good qualities;  for instance:

• President Bill Clinton was a master politician who worked with Congress to pass a lot of legislation that helped our country.
• President Ronald Reagan was a master at communicating with the America people.
• President Barack Obama never had a personal scandal during his 8 years in office.
• President George W. Bush responded forcefully following the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and calmed the American people.
• One political "enemy" of President Theodore Roosevelt remarked when he died, "You had to hate him an awful lot not to love him."

So it's even possible to call up something good about a President that many might hate.

But for my money, the worst President of our country was the 15th President: James Buchanan.

If you do just a little research, you will find that Buchanan should have been a very good President.  He had a sterling political background serving in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as serving two different Presidents as ambassadors to Great Britain and Russia.  But for whatever reason, Buchanan is known today by many Presidential experts as the worst President of all time.

When Buchanan was elected President, the country was on the brink of the Civil War.  Everyone knew it and many had tried to stop the war from coming.  Buchanan stood in the perfect position to try to do something to stop the war...but he did virtually nothing.

When he declared that he would not seek the Presidency in 1860, no one was upset.

He eventually supported Lincoln during the war, and he died in 1868.

It is an incredible thing: he knew the war was coming, he was the President and he had some power and influence to stop it...but he did nothing.

It should serve as a lesson to every single President that followed him:  DO SOMETHING.

It should also serve as a lesson to every single Christian: DO SOMETHING.

The Lord has put each of us in the place we are with the skills we possess.  He calls every single one of us to serve, to try, to do our best.

He never calls anyone to just sit and do nothing.

Because if we do that, we run the risk of being judged as the worst of all time...and possibly not just by our fellow humans.

Who Was That Masked Man?

"The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground." Genesis 18:1-2

The older I get and the more experiences that occur in my life, the more I am convinced that often the Lord sends people into our lives at specific times for very specific reasons.  Sometimes the people He sends only appear for a moment or two and then leave - never to return.  But while they were there, they did something wonderful and possibly even "saved the day" - to use the cliche.

It was in the fall of my junior year of college.  I woke up late that morning and so I was in a hurry.  I stopped to pick up my friend, Denise, and we headed out to South Austin to the elementary school where we were working at our first field experience in education.  But we were very late!

The roads were wet that morning due to a light rain overnight, and I didn't slow down like I should have.  As we neared the highway, I looked in the rear view mirror to see how awful I looked (remember I woke up late!).  For that instant, I really should have been looking in front of me...because I didn't see the big shuttle bus that had stopped abruptly just a few yards away.  Too late!  Denise yelled at me to look out, I hit the brakes, but we skidded into the back of the shuttle bus.  The seat belts worked by keeping us both from going into the dashboard or the windshield, but they didn't prevent me from going vertical about six inches in my seat and hitting my head hard on the roof.  

Denise and I staggered from the heavily damaged car, but I suddenly felt something running down my head.  I didn't know it at the time, but I had a huge gash on the top of my head and was bleeding profusely.  Denise ran around the car and helped me to the sidewalk.  I could barely talk as she asked me if I was okay and told me to give her my grandparents' phone number.  I don't remember much after that...

Except for one very big detail: a stranger picked me up, put me in his truck, and drove me a few blocks to the UT Student Health Center.  This man - whoever he was - helped me into the emergency room, made sure I was in good hands, and then he left.  I never saw him again.

My head was sewn up, my grandparents arrived, Denise made her way to the Health Center too, and I was taken home.  I spent the weekend in bed at my grandparents' home recovering from the concussion that I also received in the wreck.

By Monday morning, I was back at class, albeit feeling a little shaky.  I ran into Denise on the way to class, and I almost started crying when I saw her limping badly.  Denise had sprained both of her ankles in the wreck, and she didn't even know it until her roommate came to get her from the Health Center.  It took us both several days before we felt normal again, and my headaches finally faded away.

As life returned to normal, I realized that I never knew who that man was who took me to the emergency room in his very nice truck.  No one knew his name, no one spoke to him.  He just saved the day and then disappeared.

With no social media in 1978, I did the only thing I could do: I put an ad in the student newspaper asking for information about that man and thanking him for his help.  No response was ever heard.

He was one of the Lord's people or one of the Lord's messengers or one of the Lord's angels.

In the end, it doesn't really matter.  I am still grateful to this day.

But I wonder who he was...