Today is Easter, the holiest of days for the Christian religion. But you don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate the messages that accompany the annual celebration of Easter — rebirth, renewal, revival, faith.
Those too are the promises of the spring season, the coming of which is used to set the date for the celebration of Easter each year.
Easter and spring both bring with them promises of new beginnings. That’s a message our nation desperately needs right now.
We have endured months of economic doldrums that perhaps have not resulted in a textbook depression as defined by economists, but has definitely created in the nation’s mindset the sort of depression with which mental health experts are most familiar.
Our government, at the national level, is more divided than has been the case in many years. Logic, reason and progressive leadership have given way to partisan incivility and rancorous squabbling.
On the eve of some of the most important elections in the country’s history, discord has replaced dialogue, confrontation has overwhelmed compromise, and the politics of destruction threaten what has been the grandest experiment in government the world has ever known.
It is impossible to look at the events taking place in our nation and not think of former President Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise speech,” in which he said there was a “crisis of spirit in our country.”
This year, moreso than at any time in recent memory, we as a nation need the promise of hope and renewal that is interwoven into the spirit of Easter and epitomized by the coming of spring.
Despite woeful economic conditions and a host of domestic and international problems, the nation rebounded from the malaise identified by Carter as a spriritual crisis. In fact, just a few years after that infamous speech we enjoyed an extended period of remarkable prosperity.
For the same to happen again, we must have faith in the foundations of our nation, must believe that a rebirth is possible, and must look forward with anticipation to a renewal of the nation’s spirit.
Faith. Rebirth. Renewal.
Messages of Easter. Promises of spring.
Those too are the promises of the spring season, the coming of which is used to set the date for the celebration of Easter each year.
Easter and spring both bring with them promises of new beginnings. That’s a message our nation desperately needs right now.
We have endured months of economic doldrums that perhaps have not resulted in a textbook depression as defined by economists, but has definitely created in the nation’s mindset the sort of depression with which mental health experts are most familiar.
Our government, at the national level, is more divided than has been the case in many years. Logic, reason and progressive leadership have given way to partisan incivility and rancorous squabbling.
On the eve of some of the most important elections in the country’s history, discord has replaced dialogue, confrontation has overwhelmed compromise, and the politics of destruction threaten what has been the grandest experiment in government the world has ever known.
It is impossible to look at the events taking place in our nation and not think of former President Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise speech,” in which he said there was a “crisis of spirit in our country.”
This year, moreso than at any time in recent memory, we as a nation need the promise of hope and renewal that is interwoven into the spirit of Easter and epitomized by the coming of spring.
Despite woeful economic conditions and a host of domestic and international problems, the nation rebounded from the malaise identified by Carter as a spriritual crisis. In fact, just a few years after that infamous speech we enjoyed an extended period of remarkable prosperity.
For the same to happen again, we must have faith in the foundations of our nation, must believe that a rebirth is possible, and must look forward with anticipation to a renewal of the nation’s spirit.
Faith. Rebirth. Renewal.
Messages of Easter. Promises of spring.