I WAS QUITE PLEASED to see that Donald Miller had posted a blog entry about the Inauguration.  I was more than pleasantly surprised when I discovered that his post spoke well of Douglas Coupland’s Life after God, a series of interconnected stories revolving around a narrator who has left God behind.  And yet, as the story ends, the narrator declares:

My secret is that I need God– that I am sick and can no longer make it alone.  I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

One key turn for the narrator, Miller points out, was the presidential inauguration he visits while on the East Coast (as opposed to being home in Canada).  It is this point that Miller draws connections between God and inauguration, the hints of our need not for royalty but for a King.  That “Perhaps before we get too excited or too deflated about this week’s inauguration we can remember the One that is to come.”  We are a forward-looking people.  Not that we forget the past or ignore the present, but we live in light of the one who is the Light, whose reign is sure, and whose kingdom knows no end.

You can read all of Miller’s entry here.

Photo courtesy the Washington Post