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The older I get, the more I embrace the weep.
I am a big fella. 6’4″, somewhere around 290 lbs. No shrinking violet, me. So when I weep, people notice, and it can be embarrassing. And the longer I live, the more I weep. I weep at suffering; not all of it, but when it is presented to me without cynicism or venality, it has more than enough power to make me weep. I weep when I recognize sacrificial love, in animals or people. I particularly weep at the sudden realization of God’s involvement in some moment or life I am examining.
And in the past few years, as I have learned more of our history, I weep more than ever at the thought of the goodness of my country. I weep with gratitude to have been born an American.
Weeping, of course, is one of several things I have in common with Glenn Beck. Travel is another. Having made my first trip to the nation’s capitol for 9/12/09, I returned to Washington DC for the 8/28/10 event called Restoring Honor. And I was one of just a couple of thousand who traveled all over the Holy Land for Beck’s Restoring Courage events in August 2011. Both events were life changers, in particular my time in Israel.
And it all led up to the gathering a few days ago at “the Death Star”, Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. Restoring Love.
I’m almost permanently conflicted about Glenn Beck. Just when my natural cynicism begins to overtake me and I start to think he’s talking too long, he’s off topic, he’s not getting it done– then he races ahead to a point and place I didn’t even realize he was going, and he leaves me slack-jawed and teary-eyed. This happened again and again during the Restoring Love show, and over and over I found myself dripping tears without realizing it. You see, Glenn Beck has identified the major historical strains of God’s involvement with the planning and execution of the United States of America. He has found and lifted up the course of history that has been buried for so long. Beck’s artistic and elegant unveiling of these truths about America, about George Washington, about slavery, about the participation of black Americans in politics and in heroism, about our early religious life, who we really are as a people, and what we properly aspire to– it has been a delight to absorb these things, and Glenn Beck has done what I had thought nobody could do; made me love my country more. His command of our history, his newfound love of collecting historical artifacts and sharing them with his audience, and his incredible sense of purpose and optimism about restoring this country through spiritual restoration of its people, well it’s almost too much to take in. He is, after all, what I am; an old disc jockey, a radio morning guy.
And that old morning jock has brought home to a nation the meaning of its own great words, hollowed out over time by deliberate miseducation of the latest generations. He has made us understand faith, hope, charity; he has made us yearn for honor, courage and love. He’s made us realize that if we fight to restore this country only by grasping at its political levers of power, we miss the point. It is about us, each of us and how we each choose to live every day. We win back the country by becoming the Americans God wanted us to be. Do good. Love sacrificially. Live with honor. Seek God, love Him, and try to do what He wants of us. It’s wonderful, complicated, and necessary. America is drying up and blowing away without those aspects of its life. We can and will bring them back.
That evening at Cowboys Stadium was magnificent. It restored me, and it made me weep. Again.
