MONDAY MORNING REFLECTIONS - HAITI, AMERICA VOTES, GIANTS WIN

Rains from Tomas begin to fall in camps in Port-au-Prince

Saturday morning in Port-au-Prince

Hurricane Tomas seems to have moved beyond Haiti without landing its full force on that beleaguered nation. The rains, however, added greatly to the misery there.  I have friends in Port-au-Prince. Lynn Byers from my church, a nurse working at Adventist Hospital and Steve Mossburg, who directs Project HELP which operates primarily in the Artibonite area where the cholera outbreak appears to have hit the hardest.  Both report that pretty much everything shut down beginning Thursday night and by Friday schools, government offices, and most of the street vendors and food stores simply closed. Even the hospitals struggled to stay open for the most critical of patients.  One wonders how much this almost inevitable natural disaster will multiply Haiti's woes. Right now the greatest concern is that flood waters will spread the cholera even more rapidly.

Children waiting for their mother to vote in Idaho

Then there was Tuesday mid term elections. What comes next? Will we finally take action to stop mortgaging our children's future?  And we will ever come to a moral consensus that will stop focusing so much on our rugged individual right to sin boldly so that children can live in a safer, saner, more God-honoring world?

And we will be able to rehabilitate the political process so we can once again be a responsible and responsive democracy pursuing the common good so that future generations will not grow more cynical about authority and pessimistic about their nation? We are already ripe territory for the hatemongers and extremists. Years ago in the midst of a great Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared, "A nation divided against itself cannot stand."

Giants celebrate

The Yankees and the Phillies did not get to the World Series. In fact none of the darlings of the major markets in the East and ESPN made it at all. Instead we were treated to a relatively unwatched but exciting series as the Giants won for the first time in 50 years and the Rangers saw their first ever World Series, It was still great baseball even if I fell asleep before most games were resolved.

Note: Thanks to USA Today and AP for these great photos.  Check out USA'S Facebook page for more great scenes.