Trains Planes And Candidates

Okay okay. There weren't any planes on my bus route today; that's just a clever title. The other two though, absolutely no joke.

San Marcos is known for Texas State University, the river, the outlet malls, and the trains. They're part of this town's history, part of its culture, and part of its annoyances. When I worked in tech support, I had a customer ask me if I was in a port city when he heard a train whistle over the phone. The tracks were just right across the parking lot. Trains in San Marcos are a given. They always interrupt my bus route. Sometimes several times in a single hour.

But today, another thing crept into town, blocking lanes of traffic and making hard turns even more difficult. Some streets (and sidewalks) were even shut down completely tonight. All because a critter called American politics reared its ugly head in my quiet little college town.

Senator Barack Obama made Sewell Park a stop on his campaign tour tonight. But his forerunners started setting up yesterday, turning the park overnight into something not unlike a rock concert venue. A coworker told me there were close to ten thousand people there tonight. I was not one of them. I went to church.

Please don't take me wrong. I have nothing but the utmost respect for anyone who runs for office. It takes a lot of guts to place yourself at the mercy of countless dirt-diggers and mud-slingers, not to mention every stand-up comic and news commentator in the country. All for the chance to go under fire again and repeatedly for, in this case, four (4) to eight years. It's not a career for the faint of heart.

Why can't we let politics be about that which shares the same root word: policy? Why does it have to become a hate fest on such a personal level? Senators Obama and Clinton may or may not get my vote on election day (that'll be between me and God) but my decision won't be based on anything they did or didn't do when they were in college. It'll be because of the stance they take on issues that I consider important.

Like it or not, politicians are people too, created in the image of God, fallen and lost in sin, and completely redeemable because of Christ's atoning work on the Cross. Let's treat them as such, whether they cause traffic jams or not.