Another good thing about having children...

among many others: Despair can't hang around too long. Life goes on! And so we have to go on, joyfully living the lives we have been given, in the circumstances we have been given. When we think of what others have endured, our lives look pretty easy.

When my kids got up yesterday and I told them who was elected, they both almost cried. But already I am not finding it so hard to take, and my kids will grow up respecting the Office of the President of the United States, and the person who holds it. Romans 13:1-7:

1Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

People are going on and on about this historic time, of an African-American as POTUS. My kids understand this, but don't see why it is remarkable. Of course they have been taught about slavery and discrimination. The idea of separate restaurants, for example, is very weird to them. Some of our best "lessons" on this came from discussing early rock and roll, and the fact that sometimes a performer did two concerts in a city - one for the whites, and one for the blacks, and how people like Elvis and Ray Charles helped break down some of those barriers. But anyway, they haven't been raised to see black people as really different from white people. A different history, maybe, but not different now.

I hope that before too long, no accomplishment by a black person is considered historic. Maybe we've passed that now, and if that's the case, I will rejoice in this Obama Presidency. But I don't hold out much hope that we have; there are too many people who want to hold on to that victim status. But it's time to let that go, isn't it? Maybe that's easy for me to say. But, I see accomplished black people all the time: high-ranking generals, Secretary of State, etc. How long will we have to keep making such a big deal out of it?