Dead Trees and Donald Trump---One Reflection

   Last week, in order to test a new camera technique, we traveled over to Jekyll, our next door Island, and took some shots. This was Driftwood Beach at the north end of the island:

   This morning, as I thought about what we had done, and also looked at some of the results, my thought was-I really don't know that much about the reasons behind the landscape. So I looked it up and found that it was not really driftwood from other places, but rather the erosion of that part of Jekyll that had left those trees to die there when the sand was displaced.

   Then later this morning, as we sat eating our breakfast, we listened to a podcast about the immigration news from the weekend.

   It struck me, as I listened to some background of the immigration and refugee situation facing our country, that, just as I made a judgement of the trees on Driftwood Beach, my knowledge of how we got to where we are today on the national issues is also very superficial.

   I thought of the pictures on TV over the weekend relating to protests at airports around the country aimed at government policies regarding persons entering our country. Not just any policy, but specifically those of the new president. It seemed to be not just a reaction to a policy, but a reaction to a man, Donald Trump.

   In a day of quick sound bites on the news, any depth of the complete story is absent, and my knowledge is just as spotty as the next viewer.

   So, as I listened, I was forced to think about long standing US policy regarding immigrants and refugees. I thought about how the policies of past administrations impacted the situations of today, about how the laws that had been enacted over the years to benefit both the country and the people coming in, and how the selective enforcement of these laws over the years had gotten us to where we stood today.

   We stand in a very charged political and news environment today, but we need all the facts, not just the ones of the last few days, and it takes effort to try to understand the background.

   Men and women, boys and girls, both resident and newcomer, need the thoughtful, considered judgement of all of us. We are all affected by this.

   So, while a few of us may be concerned about how a bunch of dead trees happened to be on a small beach area of a small island in South Georgia, all of us should be, not only concerned about those people who were detained at airports this weekend, but concerned enough to see the complete and ongoing story as it is: a compilation of actions from the past that reached a point of protest on TV.

   For a listen to the podcast we listened to, go here:

   http://www.albertmohler.com/2017/01/30/briefing-01-30-17/ 

   I'm glad I did...