What's in a president?  The U.S. has had good and competent presidents, people who genuinely cared about the full range of responsibilities attending the office, and the U.S. has had poor presidents, people who either did not seem to know what they were doing in the office or, alternately, people who severely abused the office with corruption.


     Nevertheless, today, in the United States, is President's Day.  Although we remember foremost George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, we also should take a step back and ponder the idea of the presidency itself.  No one becomes president by accident, and no one can function as a president totally oblivious to the world--and the God--around him or her.

     And that's the point.  We may love a president, we may hate a president.  In a purposeful world, however, a world infused with point and meaning, point and meaning occasioned by the presence of God, we cannot dismiss him or her as some accidental blip on a pointless canvas.

     But this is difficult:  how do we know exactly what God thinks?  We surely do not.  But we affirm his presence, and we affirm the fact of presidents.  And we move across the skein of the universe, secure in its point, yet always wondering what that point ultimately is.  We look at presidents through the lens of faith:  they're here, yes, but as to prescisely why they are here at this point in time, we dare not claim we know completely.