Carol called.

It’s been several years since I heard from her.

Now 85, she was once a client I helped through some really tough years.

Now in a wheelchair, she said she’d made it through the pandemic while most of her friends and neighbors had succumbed.

I explained I’ve been working from home for a couple years writing grants and doing donor relations work. She said she found my number in some papers and “just needed to hear your voice…someone’s voice today.”

She was always a tough, independent character who could take a joke and dish one better right back. But today her voice was different.

She has no one anymore. Friends and family are all gone and she doesn’t get out. I had found her a terrier pup way back but Trixie crossed the bridge several months ago.

Small talk wound down when in closing she said “It’s good to hear your voice.”

As we hung up I vowed to phone her for a chat on Friday mornings when I’m off work and while I’m still six feet above.

She’s just 20 years older than me.

That fact is deafening.

No one should have no one.

I’m not voting for Trump.

I’m voting for First Amendment freedoms.

I’m voting for Second Amendment rights to defend those freedoms and my family.

I’m voting for Supreme Court Justices who protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for economic recovery and growth, lower interest rates, taxes, gas prices, food costs, and reducing inflation.

I’m voting for unnecessary U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts.

I’m voting for the Electoral College.

I’m voting for police respect and law and order.

I’m voting for appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for keeping jobs in the U.S. and a return to Made in America.

I’m voting to stop border invasion and a return to legal immigration. I am voting for voter ID and election integrity.

I’m voting for a strong Military & Veteran care.

I’m voting for unborn babies right to life.

I’m voting for peace in the Middle East and negotiations that make a difference.

I’m voting against human/child trafficking, pedophilia and protecting perpetrators.

I’m voting for Freedom of Religion.

I’m voting against censorship by special interests.

I’m voting for education over indoctrination that teaches our kids how to think, not what to think.

I’m not voting for Trump.

My list is by no means exhaustive but I’m voting for the candidate whose policies are most closely aligned with mine

Long ago, I read that Jesus was either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord of all.

In either capacity, he claimed a mission to save us from the deceiver of this world.

Since his entrance on the world stage, billions and billions have come to believe in him as option three, Lord of all.

If he had indeed been a lunatic or liar, his mission against deception would have been a heinously more evil imposition of a second and more perverse deception in its place.

That’s not the Jesus understood by even lunatics or liars, leaving us only one divine option.

We all walk on ledges where wisdom and prayer keeps us horizontal and hope and love moves us forward, forces which together make chance increasingly unlikely.

Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil.

Isaiah 5:20

Reframing is the oldest trick in the book.

In particular the Bible.

Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was reframed to Eve by the serpent as something that would open her eyes, seeing God in his true, selfish form.

As she did then, we still do today.

We so easily fall for the lie. Except now, it’s the media, politicians and our elected leaders who openly deceive us for their gain.

Wake up, be smart, speak out and call out deception in all its forms.

Be smarter than a garden snake.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in this world.—A.W. Tozer

The sooner we accept that while we are in this world but not of this world, and will be home soon enough, the less likely fear and discouragement will succeed in thwarting our mission.

Still, win our battles, though losing the war is prophesied imminent.

We know how this world ends but we also know, thank God, it was never our home anyway.

“I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭8‬

Never be reluctant nor ashamed to ask for what you need from those who may be equipped to help.

When you work nonprofit with a deep passion for the people of your mission, make the ask of others without shame. It’s an ask, not a demand, and your love for them remains unchanged by their response.

You are merely sharing needs of others to others for others.

God alone stirs people to action according to His timing, plan and purpose.

But be audacious.

The most unfortunate truth is that the older we get, the narrower our search for purpose becomes.

Age adds experiences that begin to make deeply personal differences much later than they ought.

As years pass, my faith becomes more central to my being and the pursuit of it as the defining “meaning of life” is so much more obvious and clearer well beyond what had been present in my merely curious early years.

Urgency to let others know that time is short and decisions they make now will determine their destination later drives us old men to instruct young men from experience, love and camaraderie to make changes in themselves and in the world while they still can,

narrowing their own search for purpose and meaning.