Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

If newspaper columns are driven by calendars and events, and they are, the subject for this week is the event that happened at the Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump rally last Saturday. If the twenty year old would-be assassin had been successful, the mood of our nation would be so much different today.

As a pastor I am careful not to use the pulpit for political considerations. I believe in each person having their own, personal opinion and freely voting as their conscience and other reflections lead. Yes, I have my opinions and don’t mind sharing them in appropriate times and places, but not from the place where the Gospel of Jesus Christ should be the message.

However, in light of the fact that I woke up Sunday morning thankful that a presidential candidate had not lost his life to a violent act, I felt that a prayer of thanksgiving was appropriate. It wasn’t an exuberant or cheerful prayer, but one of genuine and humble thanks to God for His grace.

I was born in 1949 and was a teenager through most of the 1960’s. Back then, teen years were full of excitement and promise.

Then came November 22, 1963. In Dallas, Texas, a major portion of the United States’ innocence was lost. President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed during a trip to Dallas and time stopped for our country. The nation’s attention was drawn to small-screened black and white televisions as we dealt with the saddest funeral many of us had ever seen and might not see again.

We think these are awful times and they are. I have said that I’ve never known times to be as bad as they are now, but as I remember the 1960’s, I’m not so sure.

From November, 1963, we had a few years of respite from the political violence, but in February of 1965, there was another assassination. The racial climate of the mid 1960’s was very tense and, although I didn’t know about him, there was a black political figure by the name of Malcolm X. He was killed.

The civil rights movement was led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Most towns in America, including Bainbridge, have streets named after Dr. King. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in April of 1968. Again, the nation stopped as he was buried in Atlanta.

As a college student in 1968, my political leanings might be described as idealistic and naïve. I hesitate to use the term liberal, but that was probably accurate.

I still remember the morning of June 6, 1968. Then President Lyndon Johnson had removed his name from the Democrat Party’s presidential race and Hubert Humphrey seemed to have the inside track. But, Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. began to campaign for the office and was gaining ground quite rapidly on Humphrey.

Kennedy, whose birthdate was the same as mine, November 20, was a young New York senator. His hair was long and I know that’s not a qualification, but to a young college student, it looked good.

The radio woke me up on that June 6^th morning and I heard that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated in Los Angeles as I had been sleeping. I didn’t want to get out of bed that day.

I guess I am recounting a decade that I lived through and many of you, too. It was fun, on one hand; after all, I was a teenager! On the other hand, our nation was changed.

I’ve written about it before. Life turns on a dime and, sometimes, it’s a matter of inches. That’s what happened last Saturday afternoon in Pennsylvania. A head turn, a matter of inches, and the grace of God!