There was a report in the associated press this past week that found that 70% of Americans are experiencing tremendous anxiety and stress over the presidential election, and who can blame them?  Every time you turn on the radio, or flick on the tv, or want to listen to your favorite Orthodox hymns on Youtube, you are nailed with a 10 second clip of how President Trump is Hitler reincarnated and wants to publicly execute those who are disloyal to him…or how Vice President Harris is going to allow Haitian Migrants to come your back door and shoot your dog “fluffy” (with the guns she wants to outlaw) so they can have a BBQ on your back lawn (which by the way they are now entitled to because they are squatters.) 

We have an election coming up in two weeks…and despite the campaign promises from all of those who are running, if we are convinced that the world is going to be a more perfect place after November 5th because of the promises they are making…we are in delusion. 

Yes…all of us here today need to and should go out and vote…but “put not your trust in princes, in sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.”  If we truly want to have an impact on the state of the world…on the way that we live…on the way that we respond to the harsh difficulties of this life…

“Just Pray…”

There is a repulsive religion that has swept over the world…one that is even older than Christianity itself.  It is one that all of us, by virtue of our baptism and chrismation into the Holy Orthodox Church, have sworn to leave behind! Yet on an almost daily basis, we tend to look back and to follow after it’s teachings and rituals! It is called the “religion of self.”

"There are those of us who, regardless of the evidence, will still reject Christ.  Like the people of the Gadarenes we will force Jesus out of our lives either because of fear, ignorance or pride.  No matter the strength of the evidence provided, we can never completely accept the fact that there is a loving God Who desires that all people come to Him and be saved. "

Like St. John the Baptist had while awaiting his beheading, we see a "peace from above" in the faces of those under persecution today in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.