Yesterday, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates for the third time this year. The decision was made in response to slowing job growth and elevated inflation.
The day before, President Trump spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania, telling supporters he has “no higher priority than making America affordable again.” The rally was one of the first salvos in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, which are widely expected to be about the economy.
In recent polling, 74 percent of Americans say economic conditions are fair or poor. The partisan divide is striking: 44 percent of Republicans say the economy is excellent or good, while only 20 percent of Democrats agree.
According to White House spokesperson Kush Desai, Mr. Trump inherited the Biden administration’s “inflation and affordability crisis,” but the president’s policies to cut regulations and lower drug prices “have cooled inflation and raised real wages.”
However, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum think tank, suggested that blaming a president’s predecessor only works for “about a year,” after which “you own it, you’re in the White House, good or bad, it happens on your watch. You own it, and they need to recognize that’s how the American people behave, no matter what they say.”
How radio changed everything
There was a time when few Americans saw their president. Unless you made the trek to the White House and secured an appointment with him, you were unlikely to encounter him in person. Presidential candidates seldom campaigned on their own behalf, and the chief way the larger public knew of them was through newspaper coverage.
Then came the advent of radio. While Warren G. Harding was the first president to give a radio address (1922) and Calvin Coolidge also used the medium, Franklin Roosevelt transformed it into his personal platform. His famous “Fireside Chats” connected him directly and conversationally with the American public during the Great Depression, bypassing the press and making his voice and personality known to millions.
From then to today, the candidate most believed to empathize with the public is often the candidate who wins. We elect our leaders in the hope that they will make our lives better. But how can they do this if they don’t understand our challenges or care about our problems?
In this sense, our leaders are our servants. We employ them by voting for them. But if our lives do not improve as a result, we’ll elect others we hope will do better.
Why did Jesus come at Christmas?
Why did Jesus come into the world at Christmas? The obvious answer is so he could die for our sins on Good Friday and be resurrected on Easter Sunday. But if that is all his incarnation needed to accomplish, he could have entered our race as an adult and then been arrested and crucified by the Romans.
Pontius Pilate did not crucify Jesus because of the way he entered the world or what he did in the years prior to his arrest. It is true that the popularity generated by his public ministry threatened the Jewish authorities, leading them to seek his execution by the Romans (cf. John 11:45–53). But the omnipotent God of the universe could have arranged another way for his Son to die for the sins of humanity, one that did not require his birth or earthly life before his death.
Instead, our Savior chose to enter our race in the most humble manner imaginable. He chose to grow up in obscurity and then live in relative poverty, as we noted yesterday. He was tempted by Satan himself (Matthew 4:1–10). He experienced fatigue (John 4:6), thirst (John 19:28), grief (John 11:35), and anguish (Matthew 26:36–37). He suffered horrific torture on the cross, where his friends forsook him and he felt abandoned even by his Father (Matthew 27:46).
As Scripture says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
And Jesus continues to feel our pain even today. We are in his hand (John 10:28), his Spirit dwells in us (1 Corinthians 3:16), and he is “interceding for us” right now (Romans 8:34; cf. Hebrews 7:25). As a result, he knows all we know and feels all we feel.
The night I shook my fist at God
So, in a very real sense, Jesus is the most empathetic leader in human history. You might therefore expect me to use this fact to appeal for you to “elect” him as your Lord. His omniscience knows the future better than we know the present. His omnipotence can do all his perfect love requires.
Who better to lead our lives and be the “president” of our souls?
Here’s the problem: When we relate to Jesus as to another leader we elect, we feel the liberty to “unelect” him when he disappoints us. We feel justified in blaming him for our problems and then refusing to trust or serve him.
I have known scores of people over the years who were once faithful followers of Jesus but who turned from him when they experienced trials and travails for which they held him responsible. You may be in their number today. If not, you will likely face such a trial in the future.
If God is the supreme being and we are finite, fallen creatures, there will inevitably be times when we do not understand his ways and are disappointed by them (cf. Isaiah 55:9–10). We can then decide to reject him, but this only isolates us from his protection and provision. If a doctor disappoints me and I reject all physicians, I do not harm the medical community so much as I harm myself when I next need medical care.
Instead, we can express our frustration and pain directly to our Father, as Jesus did in Gethsemane and on Calvary. We can ask him for the faith to have faith (Mark 9:24). We can know that he is with us even in “the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4) and claim his promise that “when you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2).
And the deeper the darkness, the more we will experience his light.
I was in college when my father died at the age of fifty-five. That night, I went into our backyard, looked up into the sky, and shook my fist at God.
But he did not shake his fist at me.
He never will.
Quote for the day:
“The great mystery is not the cures, but the infinite compassion which is their source.” —Henry J. M. Nouwen
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