Dear Mrs. Obama,
I am sorry you are experiencing the absence of hope in the season many of us celebrate eternal hope becoming incarnate in the world.
I could feel your pain when you told Oprah Winfrey that, with the election of Donald Trump and your husband’s approaching exit from the Oval Office, “We’re feeling what not having hope feels like.”
That’s how I felt at this same period in 2012.
Though I did not vote for your husband in 2008, and very much disagreed with his left-progressivist philosophy, I had a smattering of hope.
There was hope when the Nobel committee selected Mr. Obama for its lofty Peace Prize at the outset of his presidency, hope that they had seen some remarkable peace-making quality in him.
As a person who grew up under segregation, and loathed its injustices, I was excited that we had our first black president, and I had hope that he could inspire a new era of unity.
I had hopes that because he was a black man, Barack Obama would know of the evil of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her 1939 “Negro Project,” and oppose the flagrant abortion that still takes the lives of millions of black children and others.
I saw the photos of you and your husband with your beautiful daughters, and I had hopes that Mr. Obama would uphold the traditional values that had produced solid, happy homes – which yours appeared to be.
I had hopes back in 2008 that your husband, who had overcome many obstacles, would break the chains of welfarism choking the vitality of so many people.
I was naïve, I know, but I really thought the first black president would resist the expanding government dominance of its citizens.
Those were just a few of my hopes after Mr. Obama’s 2008 victory.
However, the presidential candidate who had promised us “hope and change” brought much change but little hope. So, in 2012, when Mr. Obama was handed his second term, I felt – to borrow your words – what not having hope felt like.
There were many reasons.
As to unity: John Gibbs, an African-American writer who holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University, wrote in The Federalist that part of Obama’s legacy is “social discord.” Obama took “every opportunity to see disparities between groups as evidence of discrimination, then using all available resources to fight this perceived discrimination by going to war against the Americans he believes are responsible for it, who are almost always whites, men, police, and Christians,” wrote Gibbs.
The hopes for a new era of peace? The New York Times noted in a May 14, 2016, story that on the previous May 6, Obama had crossed “a somber, little-noticed milestone: He had been at war longer than George W. Bush or any other president.”
Abortion? Obama will go down as “the most pro-abortion president ever to lead this nation,” said a report by Kristan Hawkins at LifeNews.com.
Religious freedom and welfarism? Early in his presidency, Obama stripped medical professionals of their right not to be forced to perform abortions. Through Obamacare he would require all American taxpayers to fund abortion. “He has made it his mission to compel nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, to pay for health plans that include abortion-inducing drugs,” despite Church doctrine, wrote Kristan Hawkins.
Government control? More than 20,000 new regulations have been laid on Americans and their enterprises during the Obama presidency, amounting to more than $100 billion annually.
Traditional marriage? Obama was so thrilled over the Supreme Court decision affirming same-sex marriage that he phoned the plaintiff his congratulations.
Mrs. Obama, I confess I have placed too much hope in human leaders – as many people are doing right now regarding Donald Trump. Still, I remember thinking in 2012 that our national foundations had been shattered by the first four years of your husband’s presidency.
I am saddened that the foundations of your hope seem now pulverized.
But the words of the ancient Psalmist come to mind: “… if the foundations are destroyed, What can the righteous do? The Lord is in His holy temple,” and, in the inspired words of Habakkuk the prophet, “let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
So, dear Mrs. Obama, take time for silence this Christmas week. Contemplate the fact that voting a Donald Trump or a Barack Obama into the Oval Office does not unseat the One who rules the whole universe.
Barack Obama was not the antichrist, and neither is Donald Trump. Certainly neither is the real Christ.
Our hope is not in the person being sworn in on the Capitol steps in Washington on a cold January day of any year, but in the Baby lying in the manager more than 20 centuries ago. As the Prophet Isaiah reminded us, “the government is on His shoulders.” He never leaves office because “there is no end” of His Kingdom and of His government.
I pray the Birth we celebrate this week will restore your hope as it does mine and millions of others, and that you, your husband, daughters and mother have a Merry Christmas and happy, hopeful New Year anyway.
Peace and love, Wallace Henley.
