Guest Columns

Over the last month or so, there have been some encouraging signs that state governments are inching away from the toughest economic crisis in decades.

Combined, the states have trimmed a half-trillion dollars since 2007, but the days of cutting much more appear over, at least for now.  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, new budgetary gaps “are practically non-existent.”

If I had a nickel for every time my grandfather prompted me with the rhetorical question, “when the going gets tough?” . . . well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t be driving a 10 year old Volkswagen.  If you were reared as I was, the CORRECT answer was, “the tough get going.”  It seems that these days, the answer is often to simply throw in the towel.

“Thou great I AM,” the Puritans wrote in “The Valley of Vision,” “I acknowledge and confess that all things come of Thee — life, breath, happiness, advancement, sight, touch, hearing, goodness, truth, beauty — all that makes existence amiable.”

Thou truly are a great and gracious God who has been truly good to me.

Thank you, Lord, for the pleasures of life, for work and sleep, for irritants that refine my rough edges, for hard times that make me tough and good times that make me smile.

I recently watched an episode of “Our America with Lisa Ling” about a faith healing ministry in Fort Mill, S.C.

Ling, a television journalist, took a camera crew to document the very Pentecostal healing meetings to which hundreds of people came, some traveling hundreds of miles.

Two sisters came with their mother who had terminal cancer, as did Steve, a man in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down.