Gary Stagg

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing]

Reminder—Trump had expressed executing people on many occasions while President, according to his own Attorney General. Now the Supreme Court has green lit any official act with full presidential immunity. Germany did the same in 1933. It turned out great.

[Gary Stagg @PgsMac]

An honour to spend the morning with Bro. Andrew in 2017 at his home in the NL. Such an inspiration to me and to countless others through the years. Well done, good and faithful servant! May 11, 1928- Sept. 27, 2022

[Sky News @SkyNews]

Former Royal protection officer Richard Griffin reminisces about a picnic he went on with the Queen at Balmoral and an encounter they had with two American tourists who did not realise they were in the company of the monarch.

#PlatinumJubilee: https://t.co/orTd7551d3

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Join us Wednesday, January 19, for the official release of the 2022 World Watch List! We’ll be counting down the top 50 countries where it’s hardest to live as a Christian.

Featuring analysis of the latest persecution trends, prayer, music, and more!

https://t.co/h3EnMKRZi1

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Mary's university graduation day was special for many reasons, not least that her parents at one point thought they'd lost her.

Seven years ago, she was one of 276 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. But in the middle of the night, she escaped.

Her story: https://t.co/gbIz8CF7Kr

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Open Doors is excited to announce our new initiative: #OneWithThem: a Day for Christian Captives!

We are looking forward to a day of prayer for Christians in captivity, on June 27.

We hope you'll join us. Visit https://t.co/efyRsfGQRM

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Thankful for the numerous Parliamentarians who are joining us virtually today!

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

This morning, Indonesia was hit with an earthquake that has killed at least 35 people. Open Doors local partners are requesting prayer for two Christian girls that are currently trapped beneath the rubble.

Pray for their safe rescue and for all those who are working to help.

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

God spoke words to the prophet Habakkuk that are worth remembering in 2021:

"Look among the nations and see; wonder, and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told."

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Many people consider it a sad list, and in some ways it is. But it also shows where God is at work - the church in many of these countries is not just surviving but thriving.

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

It is with deep gratefulness to God that Open Doors presents the 2021 World Watch List.

It is the product of extensive desk and field research and details the 50 countries in which it is most dangerous to live as a Christian.

https://t.co/t9RKehGp47

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Have you listened to the latest podcast yet? We hear a lot about the Syrian crisis, but what is less known is how much the Christian church in Syria has been depleted. Yet hope remains - learn about it at https://t.co/UMcGY00KqX

#Christianpodcast #churchresources #persecution

[blogTO @blogTO]

These Persian ice cream sundaes in Toronto make for the ultimate summertime treat 🍦 #Toronto #IceCream

[Graf-Martin Communications @GrafMartin]

Our friends at @OpenDoorsCanada are celebrating #65Years of serving our persecuted brothers and sisters.

Read our press release by clicking the link, below.

https://t.co/OGIvv5xiOy

[Gary Stagg @PgsMac]

Let us pray for you.

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

How can we pray for you? Next week, the Open Doors team will be putting aside specific time each day to pray for you- our friends, supporters, and partners.
Email us at the link in our bio, or DM us here with something you would like prayer for!

[Open Doors Southern Africa @opendoorssa]

While Christians in the free world have experienced what it's like to worship in Isolation isolation. Many of us are facing fear for our livelihoods. And we’re all uncertain of what will happen over the next few months. Click here for more: https://t.co/PJj5NbxS7m

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Friends, please be in prayer for Bangladesh and India, hit by #CycloneAmphan. Millions are displaced and the emergency centres are packed with people, inviting the spread of #COVIDー19.

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Today is Brother Andrew’s birthday! Our founder is turning 92! His passion for the persecuted church began Open Doors 65 years ago.

RT to wish a happy birthday!

#OpenDoors #persecutedchurch #GodsSmuggler

[Open Doors Canada @OpenDoorsCanada]

Open Doors is excited to announce the official launch of our new podcast!
World Watch Weekly shares prayer requests and stories from persecuted believers around the globe.
Check out our first episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Podbean!