The Lord calls us to action. It's what we DO that matters
[During the 2012 campaign], moments of peace were treasures, offering calm in an otherwise crazy life. Bruce and I went to Easter services and Passover seders. It felt healing to be able, even for a short while, to focus on values and to be in touch with
the spirit that moved me into this race.
Reverend Culpepper at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church offered me wise counsel: Be still and listen. Have faith. Let people know your heart. As the campaign progressed, I found myself thinking about
Reverend Culpepper's words time and again.
I carried my King James Bible to services, the same one I'd carried since 4th grade. Sometimes the pastor called on me to speak. I'd never spoken to a whole congregation. But I talked about my favorite Bible
verse, Matthew 25:40. Its message was very simple: The Lord calls us to action. It's what we DO that matters most.
[Matthew 25:40 "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."]
Romans 12 manifesto: old law is gone; have faith in God
[My pastor] broke it down for us with a neat little checklist, culled from Romans, chapter 12:
Dedicate yourself to clean and active Christian living
Have your values, goals, and interests adjusted to the will of God, rather than to what
society promotes
Exhibit humility, produced by faith
Use your abilities in a gracious manner for the good of all
Develop a strong distaste within yourself for whatever you know to be wrong, and hold tenaciously to whatever you know to be right
and good
Care deeply about the welfare of others
Serve God
Hang in there in unpleasant, difficult times
Be generous and friendly
Be good to persons who treat you badly
Identify with other people's circumstances
Be humble, and
associate with humble people
Don't retaliate
Be agreeable, not argumentative.
I look at Romans, and it's like a manifesto. It says the old law is gone. It says that Christ is the sacrifice for all time and for those who have faith in God.
Dorothy made her own uneasy peace with her husband, and decided to stay in the marriage. Keeping the family together was more important than pursuing independent aspirations or escaping her husband's indignities. "Maybe that's why she's such an accepting
person," Dorothy said of Hillary. "She had to put up with him."
Hillary and Bill's difficult but enduring marriage is perhaps explained in the context of the marriage of her parents, dominated by the humiliating, withholding figure of her father, whom
she managed to idealize, while rationalizing his cruelty and indifference to the pain he caused. Hillary somehow found a way to focus on what her father was able to give, not what was denied.
As she later did with her husband, Hillary took an almost
biblical view in her forgiveness of her father's actions: "Love the sinner, hate the sin." The lesson came directly from Hugh Rodham: "He used to say all the time, `I will always love you but I won't always like what you do,'" said Hillary.
Rejoice in our suffering; endurance produces character
For Condi, the loss of her mother meant the loss of the person whose advice she valued most in the world, her best friend, her confidant. Looking back on those days of bereavement, Condi says, she can now see that her time of grieving was a privilege for
her in many ways, and she encourages others to be optimistic in the midst of suffering.
"It is in times like these that we are reminded of a paradox, that it is a privilege to struggle. American slaves sang, 'Nobody knows the trouble I've seen--Glory
Hallelujah!' Growing up, I would often wonder at the seeming contradiction contained in this line. But I came to learn that there is no contradiction at all. I believe this same message is found in the Bible in Romans 5, where we are told to 'rejoice in
our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.' For me, there is the lesson that only through struggle do we realize the depths of our resilience and understand that the hardest of blows can be survived."