UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is Britain’s new prime minister. She will formally replace Boris Johnson today when she is appointed to her office by Queen Elizabeth II.

The queen has appointed all fourteen of her previous prime ministers at Buckingham Palace in London. However, the ninety-six-year-old monarch is staying at her holiday home in Scotland between August and October. To keep her from having to travel, the new prime minister will travel to her for a ceremony unlike any other in the queen’s seventy-year reign.

British prime ministers lead the political party that gains enough elected seats in Parliament to form a ruling coalition. If their party no longer supports their leadership, as happened with Boris Johnson, they can be forced to resign. Or if a general election replaces their party, as happened with Winston Churchill in 1945, they are replaced as well.

In other words, the new prime minister will only be prime minister so long as her party supports her and her party wins the next general election (which must be held no later than 2025).

Preparing for Martian pathogens

Great Britain’s elective system and the advanced age of her queen both illustrate the finitude of the human condition. Here’s another example: former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was buried in Moscow last Saturday. According to the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin did not attend the funeral because he was too busy.

What Mr. Putin may not realize is that one day the funeral will be his. He is sixty-nine years old; life expectancy for males in Russia is sixty-eight. Americans should take note: our average life expectancy fell from nearly seventy-nine years in 2019 to seventy-six in 2021.

Here’s some good news: new COVID-19 boosters are expected to be made available this week. The new vaccine will be updated for the first time to target the latest version of the virus. However, according to one epidemiologist, we can still expect that every year, around 50 percent of Americans will be infected with the virus and more than one hundred thousand will die.

As another illustration of our mortality, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy warned yesterday that the “world is once again on the brink of nuclear disaster” after heavy shelling brought down Europe’s largest nuclear plant’s transmission line. New research has determined that there are no health benefits, only dangers, from drinking alcohol. A Denver woman fell nine hundred feet to her death while climbing in Colorado. An earthquake in China has killed at least sixty-five people.

And our greatest threats may be threats we don’t yet know to exist: NASA is planning a very special lab for handling samples that will eventually be returned to our planet from Mars. The reason is frightening: Martian pathogens could spawn a pandemic for which we have no defenses.

A sin you and I are especially tempted to commit

Yesterday we noted that “the Lᴏʀᴅ takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 147:11). Here is what he does not “take pleasure in”: the sin of presumption.

Today’s stories illustrate the biblical precept, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). Scripture warns, “No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death” (Ecclesiastes 8:8).

Unfortunately, the sin of presumption is especially tempting for those of us who seek to follow Christ. We know that we have become the children of God when so many have not (John 1:12). We study his word, pray, attend worship, contribute our tithes and offerings, and read content like this Daily Article when so many do not.

Satan would love for us to commit horrific sins that make headlines, but if we refuse, he will tempt us with “smaller” sins than those that make the news. We might then presume that if we commit these sins but are (apparently) more godly than others, we must be godly enough for God.

But “small” sins grieve the Holy Spirit just like public sins: “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). Pride in our apparent godliness is one such sin.

“What have we done that God didn’t do first?”

To this end, a statement by Max Lucado seems relevant today: “I’m wondering if you’d be willing to join me in a prayer of repentance—repentance from arrogance. What have we done that God didn’t do first? What do we have that God didn’t first give us? Have any of us ever built anything that God could not destroy? Have we ever created any monument that the master of the stars can’t reduce to dust?”

Max concludes: “Let’s humble ourselves before the hand of God. The Bible reminds us that those who walk in pride, God is able to humble. And we don’t want him to humble us, do we?”

Today’s theme became personal for me when I learned, as I noted earlier, that Americans’ life expectancy has dropped to 76.1 years. For a male like me born in 1958, life expectancy is even shorter—just seventy-four years. That is just ten more years. Said differently, according to actuarial tables, I have only 520 more weeks to live.

Now, I agree with David’s prayer to God, “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15). My grandfather lived to be ninety-nine years old. However, my father died at fifty-five. I have no idea if this is my last Daily Article or if I’ll be writing for another twenty years.

But I do know this: I must refuse the related temptations to presume that I will be here tomorrow and that I am all I need to be today. I need to be a “living sacrifice” to God every day that I live (Romans 12:1), abiding constantly and intentionally in the presence of Christ (John 15:5) and surrendered unconditionally to the leading and empowering of his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).

So do you.

Oswald Chambers noted, “The secret of the missionary is—I am his, and he is carrying out his enterprises through me.” He then added: “Be entirely his.”

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Canadian police are searching this morning for two men suspected of stabbing at least ten people to death in a rampage that has shocked the nation. At least fifteen others were injured in the killing spree.

In other news, a suspect has been charged in connection with the disappearance of a Memphis teacher investigators believe was abducted while jogging Friday morning. She has not been found at this writing.

And a government administrator admitted yesterday that there is no timeline for when residents of Jackson, Mississippi, will have access to drinkable water. It has now been a week since pumps at the main water treatment failed, leading to the emergency distribution of bottled water and tanker trucks for 180,000 people.

Artemis I postponed again

In contrast to the fallenness and finitude of humans, the Bible says of our Creator: “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Psalm 147:4–5).

On this Labor Day, the contrast between his omnipotence and our limitations is illustrated powerfully by our latest astronomical endeavor: Artemis I was postponed again Saturday due to a fuel leak. Assuming it launches later this year, the flight test will be an uncrewed mission around the moon that will travel an estimated 1.3 million miles.

Let’s put that achievement into perspective: the distance from the earth to the moon is 238,900 miles. The distance from the sun to Neptune, the outer planet in our solar system, is 2.78 billion miles, which is 11,636 times further than the distance from the earth to the moon.

The distance from our sun to our nearest star (Alpha Centauri) is nearly 25 trillion miles. The distance to the edge of our Milky Way galaxy is 600,000 trillion miles. There are as many as two hundred billion galaxies in the known universe, each of them containing an estimated one hundred billion stars.

And God made all of that.

“Draw near to the throne of grace”

After proclaiming the enormity of God’s creation, the psalmist brings his omnipotence home to us: “His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man” (Psalm 147:10). In other words, he is not impressed with our finite, fallen capacities.

Instead, “the Lᴏʀᴅ takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (v. 11).

To “hope in his steadfast love” is to depend intentionally and unconditionally on the grace and mercy of our Lord: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

It’s been said that grace is getting what you do not deserve; mercy is not getting what you do deserve. Both are vital to human flourishing in this life and in eternity.

But both come with caveats made ironic by Labor Day.

“Jesus heals all who come, and casts none out”

The caveat to experiencing grace is that we must admit that we need what only God can do, that our labors are insufficient to earn what God can only give.

In Mark 1, we find a leper imploring Jesus for healing. “I will; be clean,” our Lord responded (v. 41). With this result: “And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean” (v. 42). Commenting on this miracle, Charles Spurgeon wrote: “The sinner is in a plight more miserable than the leper; let him imitate his example and go to Jesus . . . and there need be no doubt as to the result of the application. Jesus heals all who come, and casts none out.”

Spurgeon also observed that Jesus touched the diseased man and so “made an interchange with the leper, for while he cleansed him, he contracted by that touch a Levitical defilement. Even so Jesus Christ was made sin for us, although in himself he knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

He added: “That hand which multiplied the loaves, which saved sinking Peter, which upholds afflicted saints, which crowns believers, that same hand will touch every seeking sinner, and in a moment make him clean.”

The only caveat is that we lepers must admit we cannot heal our leprosy and then bring our disease to the only One who can.

“My wretchedness is no match for thy mercy”

The caveat to experiencing grace—getting what we do not deserve—is that we must admit we can do nothing to earn God’s grace. The caveat to experiencing mercy—not getting what we do deserve—is that we must admit what we have done that requires his mercy.

Henri Nouwen observed that the human cry for mercy “is possible only when we are willing to confess that somehow, somewhere, we ourselves have something to do with our losses. Crying for mercy is a recognition that blaming God, the world, or others for our losses does not do full justice to the truth of who we are. At the moment we are willing to take responsibility, even for the pain we didn’t cause directly, blaming is converted into an acknowledgment of our own role in human brokenness.

“The prayer for God’s mercy comes from a heart that knows that this human brokenness is not a fatal condition of which we have become the sad victims, but the bitter fruit of the human choice to say no to love.”

The good news is that “the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11, my emphasis). As A. W. Tozer noted, mercy “is something God is, not something God has.” No circumstance can change his character.

Tozer therefore rejoiced to pray, “My sin and wretchedness is no match for thy mercy.”

“Everyone has a need only God can meet”

On this Labor Day, you can trust in your labor or you can admit your need for God’s grace and mercy. But you cannot do both.

I saw a church sign recently that said, “Everyone has a need only God can meet.”

What is yours?

What will you do with it today?

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President Joe Biden delivered a speech last night from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I have been where he stood and was deeply moved by the experience.

It was here, at the “birthplace of America,” that the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Eleven years later, in the same room, delegates to the Constitutional Convention created the United States Constitution.

In many ways, their work defined what the president called the “soul” of the nation, which he defined as “the breadth, the life and the essence of who we are.”

In his view, that “essence” is under threat from what he called “MAGA Republicans” who “are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” He added that they “promote authoritarian leaders, and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.”

In response, the Republican National Committee called Mr. Biden the “divider-in-chief” and described the Democratic Party as “one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”

Unsurprisingly, when Republicans and Democrats were asked in a new Quinnipiac Poll, “Do you think the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse,” 69 percent from each party said yes.

“Religion and morality are indispensable supports”

As I noted yesterday, our nation’s founders were convinced that personal virtue is indispensable to political unity. I would add today that the men who gathered in Independence Hall were equally convinced that religious commitment was foundational to personal and public virtue.

It was in Independence Hall that George Washington was appointed Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in 1775. When he delivered his “Farewell Address” in 1796 after his second term as president, he declared, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

He added, “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Our second president, John Adams, stated two years later: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.” He added, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

How can you and I help Americans renew the moral and spiritual commitments President Washington believed were “indispensable” to our nation and her future?

“So that an opponent may be put to shame”

It is human nature to measure ourselves by other humans. If you and I attend worship services when others do not, if we live by biblical moral standards when others reject them, if we read the Bible and literature like this Daily Article when others do not, it is natural to consider ourselves to be more spiritual than others.

But in a culture as decadent as this one, simply being more spiritual than the people we know will not change the people we know.

Paul instructed Titus to “show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” (Titus 2:7–8, my emphasis).

When Paul asked Titus to live a life others could imitate, he was merely asking Titus to do what the apostle was already attempting to do himself. He sought to “give you in ourselves an example to imitate” (2 Thessalonians 3:9) and thus could say to them, “You yourselves know how you ought to imitate us” (v. 7).

Paul made the same request of Timothy: “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:13). And he instructed him to pay this “pattern” forward: “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2).

Given the clergy abuse scandals of recent years and our declining rate of church commitment, would our culture say Christians are living in ways they should imitate? If not, what moral authority can we possibly claim for calling them to our faith?

What we should ask of everything we do

Philosopher Immanuel Kant asserted that we should “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” In other words, we should ask of everything we do: What if everyone did what I am about to do?

To change the culture, we must live in a way others should imitate. Said differently, we must follow Jesus so closely that those who follow us are led to him. Therefore, it is good to ask of everything we do: Will this glorify God or grieve him? Will it draw others to Christ or repel them from the faith?

Commenting on Jesus’ statement that Christians are the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), St. John Chrysostom (AD 347–407) observed: “If others lose their savor, then your ministry will help them regain it. But if you yourselves suffer that loss, you will drag others down with you. Therefore, the greater the undertakings put into your hands, the more zealous you must be.”

How “zealous” for your Lord will you be today?

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