Parson Tom's Tomes:

 Wednesday September 5, 2012

I went to the Board of County Commissioners Meeting yesterday to deliver a prayer at the beginning of the meeting. I had been sent the agenda and it was a standard meeting. The first items of business were to give out County Service pins for county employees; a reference librarian for ten years services, a deputy sheriff with the schools for ten years, a child protective services worker for fifteen years, a building inspector for 25 years and a deputy Sheriff Investigator - the Employee of the month who is retiring in a few months after 25 years. Although the county is 90 miles long, it is still a small county and these people had names as all good and faithful workers. The County stopped their business to honor them for the names they had lived into. After all those presentations the presenters, the honorees and their families went outside to get their pictures taken. When that crowd left the meeting room, only two or three people were remaining on the side by the door. It reminded me of a shotgun wedding congregation with only a couple people on the “groom’s” side.  

The business continued for there was a proclamation of the week of Sept 17-23 as US Constitution Week. There was more: some bids to vote on, the use of social media by the county, the discussion about certain bonds, something about a NC DOT grant, an agreement about leasing computers, some board appointments and so on. I had some more business to attend to and I left after about an hour and yet what I was seeing was a government in action. I don’t agree with all of the commissioners, but then it is less important that they agree with me, than the fact that these are people of integrity – and they are – for they also live into their names.

The agenda called to mind three quotes; (1) the phrase “Goodliest Land under the Cope of Heaven” comes Sir Walter Raleigh’s 16^th century explorers description of Roanoke Island to Queen Elizabeth I, (2) the phrase “come reason together” is stolen from Isaiah I:18, and (3) “We the people  . . .  ” is lifted from the Preface to the US Constitution.  This is a prayer about faithful everyday life.

Gracious God, Creator of this the “Goodliest land under the Cope of Heaven” we ask you to bless this meeting of our County Commission. As we give thanks for our dedicated employees and their conscientious work may we all be reminded that it is in faithful service to something much greater than ourselves that we find true liberty? We remember this month an attempt when “We, the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, . . . d(id) ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America.”

This magnificent yet flawed document, written by honorable but flawed people in a flawed time finishing deliberation on September 17, 1787 is a basis of how, we flawed people in our flawed times, continue to re-interpret and re-deliberate our systems of governance. We give thanks for our founding fathers who met in Philadelphia for those five hot months with different agendas yet chose to respect differences and arrive at a compromise for the good of the whole. Help us to learn from their example that we might respect our colleagues in this experiment in self- governance and “come reason together” for the good of your people. Give us tolerance and help us to find delight in our coworkers and continue to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” This we ask In your name. A-men