October 17, 2011
Maybe it’s time to start a new victims support group. The acrostic would be difficult; no one would be comfortable admitting that they are members of BO.
That’s “Billionaires Obvious.” When you’re a Forbes Lister (minimum net worth, today: $1 billion), you give up your anonymity, so “BA” is disallowed. Mortimer Zuckerman is only #188 on the American list ($2.2 billion, as of last month), but would probably be asked to share at the organizing meeting for BO.
The script for his keynote was published in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. Though born in Canada and educated at McGill in Montreal, he did his graduate work at Wharton and Harvard Law in the ‘60s, and decided to stay in the USA, “because of the sheer openness and energy of life in America.”
His optimism carried him through the 2008 election cycle, but he has experienced a decline in optimism during the last 36 months. His perspectives, offered to the WSJ’s James Freeman: “Democracy does not work without the right leadership… The country has got to come to the conclusion at some point that what you’re doing is not just because of an ideology or politics but for the interests of the country…”
In the same section, Peggy Noonan led with a quip she heard from a TSA agent in New York: “Ten years ago, Steve Jobs was alive. Bob Hope was alive. Johnny Cash was alive. Now, we’re outta jobs, outta hope and outta cash.” A uniformed federal employee, with high assurance of continued employment… but sensing the angst that now characterizes the country that has been – for generations – the “City upon a Hill,” showing the best of a nation’s potential to offer hope in a fallen world.
We’re on-the-hunt for a savior, in the next election cycle… but there seems to be limited certainty that an Anointed One is on the stage. Amazing, isn’t it? There is a deeply rooted longing for rescue that emanates from the soul of people, whatever their spiritual foundations…
Like Zuckerman, Saul of Tarsus was a Jewish business man active in cultural and religious affairs when his search for meaning collided with the reality of the Lord Jesus.
That encounter changed his life, forever… and he wrote his draft for a talk, suitable for the next meeting of BO, or publication in next weekend’s Wall Street Journal:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. (Romans 8:18-30)
That kind of perspective places eternal optimism against a backdrop of current despair. Which of those conditions is manifested in your outlook, today?
Bob Shank