“Mob rule” as Kavanaugh hearings begin

“I’ve covered five other Supreme Court confirmation hearings. None of them included anything like the chaos in the opening minutes of the Kavanaugh hearings this morning.”

This was New York Times legal reporter Adam Liptak’s response to the beginning of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings yesterday. Today’s Washington Post reports that dozens of protesters were arrested; one senator complained of “mob rule” as the hearings began.

In other controversial news, Nike announced that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick will be featured in its new advertising campaign. The company’s stock fell more than 3 percent on the news and some burned their Nike apparel in protest. Others applauded the company for its decision; some are calling Kaepernick “the face of the new civil rights movement.”

“You have wrapped yourself in a cloud”

As our society becomes more divided and divisive, Christians are tempted to withdraw from the acrimonious “culture wars.” The more secular our culture becomes, the more absent God seems.

But this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, like a horoscope that predicts the bad day its reader then expects and thus experiences. The less we look for God, the less we see him. And the less we see him, the less we look for him.

This cycle extends to our prayers as well.

The book of Lamentations describes its author’s grief over the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in 586 BC. By chapter 3, the author’s mourning for his nation has affected his intercession.

He complains that God “shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked” (vv. 8-9). He says to the Lord, “You have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through” (v. 44).

When we measure our prayers by their circumstantial results, it’s sometimes easy to feel the same way. Your loved one is still sick; your wayward child has not yet repented; your future seems clouded and…