It is forecast to be “the biggest human gathering on U.S. soil” in history! And everybody and his brother is headed to the Inauguration (although in our case, my brother’s going and I’m not). Predictions are that between three and five million people will crowd into the heart of the nation’s capital to “watch” as Barak Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America on Tuesday, at precisely one minute before noon.

Can a picture of death grace the cover of anything? The latest Newsweek magazine (January 12, 2009) ran two two-page spreads back to back before the title page of its cover story on the war between Israel and the Hamas. Both spreads are pictures of death. Both innocent victims.

Nothing like welcoming the New Year with an explosion . . . or two or three . . . and I’m not thinking of the fireworks over the Times Square ball drop either!

They’ll go down as the most watched and talked about flying shoes in history! And from them we learn a lesson about Christmas. By now you’ve seen the replays a hundred times—that press conference moment in Baghdad Sunday with President Bush and Prime Minister al-Malaki standing side by side at the podium. The president had just begun his opening statement, when a 28-year-old Iraqi TV reporter, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, jumped to his feet and exploded with some unsavory shouting, as one by one he hurled his shoes at the president.

“FBI wiretaps snare governor.” The bold headline atop the morning paper is the sad chronicle of another political leader who has succumbed. Living across the lake from Chicago as we do, the story of the fallen governor of Illinois has obviously become the lead headline in all our news outlets. The paper carried portions of the expletive-deleted transcript of some of those wiretaps. And U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s reflection that Lincoln would be rolling in his grave is commentary enough.

In this season of “peace on earth,” you wouldn’t think so—shopping at Wal Mart or living in Mumbai. In one of those strange twists of coincidence both stories ran over “Black Friday” last weekend (that notorious day-after-Thanksgiving shopping nightmare). At the Wal Mart on Long Island frenzied Christmas shoppers broke down the door and trampled a Wal Mart employee to death as they rushed in to purchase their list-topping gifts for loved ones—nevermind that nobody stopped to love the one who was on the ground fighting for his last breath. Nobody stopped to help either.

Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, his acclaimed history of the Pilgrims, recounts how William Bradford, the intrepid leader of that courageous band of Puritans, years later described “that first morning in America.” Recalling with wonder their landing on the salty, windswept shores of Cape Cod Bay on November 15, 1620, Bradford wrote: “But here I cannot stay and make a pause and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition. . . .

What’s a Michigan Thanksgiving? Just ask the chief executives of the Big Three auto makers, who with hat in hand this week begged Congress for $25 billion of bailout loans. While it’s hard to sympathize with 8-figure compensated corporate executives, the plight of 175,000 Michigan auto industry workers is concerning. If GM, Ford or Chrysler were to go bankrupt, siren voices are predicting “a nuclear winter” and “an economic tsunami” for our home state. Who knows?

We have lost a gifted leader and a dear friend. The death of Jere Patzer, 61, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Pacific Northwest, is not only the death of a personal friend—I’ve known Jere for thirty years since ministry days together in Oregon. But it is also the loss of an uncommonly gifted church administrator in our community of faith.

In the election of Barack Obama, as our nation’s first black president, we all made history together. Irrespective of our political convictions or party loyalties, we collectively share this historic moment.