This week, I hope you have been enjoying our visit with Governor Mike Huckabee.  It truly was an honor to meet this kind, approachable man of God.  It felt as though Jim and I had known him for years!

Both of us had been reading his new book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy. You know it is really a good book when you can catch us reading anything at the very same time!  There were several moments that we were nodding our heads simultaneously with this feeling of relief that someone understands what America has been crying out desperately to our government for a very long time…common sense!

Many times as I read this book, I began to remember what it was like to grow up with my mother and brothers. I have also listened to Jim tell so many stories of his childhood over the years and enjoyed the smile as he told them!  So much has changed in this country since that time!

I know my mother could never imagine prayer being taken out of the schools or having to fight just to have a nativity set outside on the town square.  I cannot believe the freedoms that are being threatened in a country that was founded on just that principle…freedom.  Jim and I have felt recently that what is happening in the United States was hopeless. Where was the common sense in the decisions being made by our government?

So much has changed, that is true. We live in a very uncertain world.  I believe Governor Huckabee’s visit and his book taught me something. In order for anything to change in our country we must have the courage to stand up strong and say that God IS here and has been here all along.  We must always remember that freedom is what makes America great and that here, especially here, we have every right to be a Christian and proudly so!

We do not have to shout to the world about how horrible we are being treated.  We can be proactive!  We can create ways to help each other.  We can speak out with new, compassionate, wise solutions to problems.  We can stand by the principles of honesty, hard work and charity that our parents and grandparents taught us.  We can teach our children to pray after school, at recess when they are jumping rope, on the bus before they start the day.

Can you imagine what kind of leadership we could have if every Christian in America practiced the simple right of voting??  What would happen if we left the church building for a while and showed the world the power of our Lord Jesus: minister as He would, to everyone with no judgment, but because He has taught us to do so?  Simply put, in order for our Christian values to become a part of our country again, we have to use the common sense that God gave us!