Repentance from sin COULD stop Gustav in its tracks, people, yes, even at the last minute!

Amos 3:6: . . .shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

Especially the people of New Orleans should do this, especially any who consider themselves Christians, but in fact any of them.

All that's needed is a recognition of the sins of the city and of the nation and people getting on their knees by the hundreds, preferably thousands, to confess and repent of those sins and ask for God's mercy. On top of the known sins of New Orleans, its general corruptions, its Mardi Gras celebration, there is also the crime wave that followed on Hurricane Katrina and the construction fraud. Repentance could start there at least.

Showing mercy for the sufferers of any disaster is God's requirement of us, but so is warning of his judgments which He isn't going to stop without repentance. American style we apply human knowhow to the problem. We set up an efficient system for escaping the city, we send in aid of every kind and we otherwise stand back and let Gustav do its thing, planning to pick up the pieces afterward. True, those systems weren't in place last time and the city took the full fury of hurricane Katrina, but that time all we heard was how they SHOULD have been in place, how remiss the government was. Well, I suppose it was, but that misses the point that HURRICANES ARE IN GOD'S POWER, and if they are going to destroy an American city that's by HIS design, and our REAL job is to seek His face to find out why and repent of the causes. There was no repentance for the causes of Katrina, just as there was no repentance for the causes of 9/11, and here God is going to send another walloping from His merciful hand of judgment, and the meaning of Gustav will likely also be ignored.

The Republican convention will be curtailed to some extent while various delegates and would-be attendees make themselves available to help with the expected devastation. Again, it's good to help the sufferers but what the Bible calls the "arm of flesh" which is human strength, is of no real use in the things of God if used without seeking Him. SO much better if those who consider themselves Christians among the Republican delegates got on their knees to plead for God's mercy on the nation.

I wrote President Bush after 9/11 to ask him to call a day of repentance and prayer for the nation then, as some previous Presidents of the US had done in the past. Of course he didn't. We've become "multicultural" in the last few decades (instead of the melting pot we used to be), and we might offend somebody if we acknowledged the one true God over the various false gods around the world, now worshiped by sizeable numbers of the American population. Again I'd ask Bush to do the same now, as Gustav approaches, but instead he's going to present his own presence in support of the sufferers as if he has any power over hurricanes. It's God's appeased wrath we need to be seeking, not our President's useless speeches.

Some of course called Katrina God's judgment, but they focused exclusively for some reason on an annual gay celebration there. Others have denied it and point out all the ways Katrina could have targeted that particular event but didn't. It's a fair point. There's rarely one cause for God's judgment but rather an accumulation of sins over years. Also, God's judgment may come as a cleansing, as the Flood did in Noah's day, as the Babylonian Captivity was for the land of Israel, and preventing the holding of a celebration dishonoring to God could be as much of the reason for a massive disaster as punishment. But that celebration does have to be listed among the sins of New Orleans to be repented of. Mardi Gras which has a pagan origin, a massive pagan celebration of the flesh before the Catholic period of Lent, has to be figured in the mix of sins. And in answer to this latter writer I linked, who asks why God would have waited 35 years to judge a city (or a few hundred years for that matter), anyone who knows the Bible knows that's how God works. Sins accumulate over time before God brings judgment on the scale of a Katrina or Gustav -- or the Babylonian Captivity or the end of the world.

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Later. Here's an article about the wider economic impact caused by these gigantic hurricanes. It includes a hint about another thing to repent of: after Katrina they reestablished casinos that God had seen fit to have wiped out the first time around. We don't learn.

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Later still. I was wondering where the interruption of the Republican convention fit into God's judgment. Well, it seems obvious to me now. The Republicans have been in charge of the nation for the last eight years. They did not seek God, they did not call for days of repentance. Pres Bush called Islam a "religion of peace" effectively befriending enemies of both God and our nation. He also hosted an ecumenical (i.e., idolatrous) prayer service after 9/11 in the National Cathedral, mixing God's enemies with Christians. It's not too late to repent though. Bush could still get alone with God and seek to understand these things and even yet call a time of repentance on behalf of the nation before he leaves office.

I can't imagine why God gave the Republicans Sarah Palin. We deserve the Marxist Obama or Hillary as punishment. Maybe there are still enough of us who seek His glory that He continues to have mercy on us.

Thank You, Lord, for Sarah Palin

American politics has become so ungodly in recent years there may be no justification for a Christian even to vote any more, since any vote, usually of necessity for the lesser of two evils, is usually a vote for something or someone one's Spirit-taught conscience can't fully endorse.

Do you let the worst prevail because you can't in all conscience even endorse the less bad? Do you abandon the world of politics altogether as "of this world" because Christians are supposed to be in the world but not of it? Or do Christians have an obligation to vote against the worst because of our calling to be salt and light to the world?

I've been debating all this with myself for a while now.

Now I want to report that John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for Vice President has unexpectedly inspired me. My first knowledge of her existence came with that very announcement and the speech she gave on the occasion.

She comes across as an articulate, tough-minded and honest patriotic American motivated not by the usual power politics but a genuine desire to serve the country, with a record of already having faced down corruption as governor of Alaska. She's also a Christian, as well as an idealistic and very real and likeable human being rather than a self-serving politician.

I didn't think it was possible to be inspired at all in this election, it's all looked so hopelessly mired in the politics of sin and self-indulgence and anti-patriotism that took off in the sixties with the Cultural Marxists. Then along comes this fresh face with an honest and godly agenda and the personality to be persuasive, and I'm nearly giddy with the hope that God isn't quite ready to throw us out with the trash.

I say this even as Hurricane Gustav is approaching along the same path as Katrina of three years ago, that destroyed so much of New Orleans, again threatening that city along with the vulnerable oil wells in the area. Gustav is expected to arrive about the time the Republican Convention is getting underway on Monday. There are many levels of God's judgment to be thought about here if it disrupts that event along with devastating the Gulf Coast, leaving displaced persons and destruction of property in its path, plus the consequent rising prices across the nation.

Time will tell, but I'm rooting for Sarah Palin and for the country. I'm even rooting for John McCain now. A man who could choose Sarah Palin deserves my vote. May God have mercy in the midst of judgment.