Barack Obama: Prophecy?

So President Obama has confidently secured a second term. For a short period in 2008 I wanted to be American. I know the exact day and time when this wish flooded over me.  It was about 1030 on Sunday June 8, 2008. It was on one of those rare occasions when I purchased a Sunday paper, and approximately five months before Barack Obama would become President Elect of the United States of America.

 In the Sunday Times that day Andrew Sullivan, columnist and political commentator, declared:


Barack Obama will sweep aside John McCain and make history by becoming the first black US President

For Sullivan to “call it” for Obama so early in the campaign was an outrageously provocative thing to do.  But you know what, I believed him, and my excitement began to build.
        
Sullivan wondered whether Americans had fully absorbed what they had done. Just over 40 years after the Supreme Court had struck down the ban on interracial marriage, and 40 years after America had exploded with rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, a black man - an African-American in the truest sense - had become the favourite as the next President of the United States.

Sunday Times June 2008
After reading the article I knew that I was about to witness an extraordinary moment in history, because it was all so counter-intuitive. You mean in a country seriously and openly conflicted about race, a black man was going to become its Commander-in-Chief, ‘leader of the free world’ and the most ‘powerful man on earth’. You’re kidding me; I was dreaming right?

If Sullivan could make such an unequivocal declaration, then I could add the power of my own spirit to the flow of invisible currents that was apparently propelling Barack Obama to the White House. 

 Three months later Lehmann Brothers de-materalised leaving McCain looking just a tad inept. 

 Then the Church of England got in on the act. On November 3rd, the day before the election, the Daily Telegraph commented on its front page that even the Church of England's prayer for the day taken from the Book of Judges (ch 4) seemed to back Obama. I hot-footed it home to see what the heck they were talking about. Well I have no idea which part of Judges 4 provided the Church’s chosen prayer for the day, but verse 14 goes like this:

          “And Deborah [the prophetess] said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand : is not the Lord gone out before thee? So Barak went down from mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him.”

          Can you believe that? You couldn’t make it up. 

I wondered whether any member of the clergy had picked up on the significance of their choice of biblical book, down to the very chapter (even if not the verse) from which the prayer for the day had been selected. Consciously or unconsciously the Church of England had apparently invoked the spirit. I found that simply joyous.

           Well its all history now, and I have all the memorabilia, including that Sunday Times article.  My desire to become an American ended after the party on Inauguration night in January 2009.  In any event, 300 million guns in circulation, and the NRA wanting armed guards with semi-automatic weapons to stand outside the schools of 6 and 7-year olds is a bit off the wall.

          I'll come visit though. Some of my best friends are American.

       Wishing you a very merry Christmas and happy holidays; with a New Year full of employment opportunities and a little less debt.

 

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