” ….if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land…” — 2 Chronicles 7:14
It has been a very busy few weeks in the US. Firstly, the country’s longest former President, Jimmy Carter died on December 29, 2024, after being on hospice for the last year.
He had turned 100 years old on October 1, 2024. In November 2024, the US brought back to the White House to serve as President, Donald Trump, who had served previously from 2016 to 2020. T
he other events keeping Americans up at night and busy during the day has been the onset of fires that have swept through Los Angeles, with the death toll at 25, 2,000 people missing, 25,000 evacuated, and vast amounts of property damaged beyond repair. A midweek reprieve as a ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East.
As the country wades through these events, the world watches, some countries sent or are sending help, and many others are praying. And the two major political parties (the Republican and the Democrats) have been forced to stop politicking, come together to wade in the corridors of history, and incumbent President Joe Biden bids the nation farewell with a Middle East ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
The death of Jimmy Carter, who was the 39th President of the United States, was born into poverty on a peanut farm in Georgia, died of metastatic melanoma (a hard-to-treat cancer); his death did not come as a shock, although all Americans mourned and remembered him as the honest hard-working former president. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
His wife Roslynn Carter, whom he married in 1946, died a year earlier on November 19, 2023.
Among the US newsreels are images and follow up news about the wildfires that have swept over Los Angeles, California, home of Hollywood film industry and many actors and actresses, 25 people are believed to be dead and more than a dozen others remain unaccounted for as multiple wildfires, fueled by severe drought conditions and strong Santa Ana winds, continue burning in Southern California. The Palisades Fire, burning in the Pacific Palisades, and the Eaton Fire, burning in Altadena, have forced thousands to evacuate and destroyed more than 12,000 structures.
And California’s Governor Newsom said in a statement that “cleanup crews are moving into neighborhoods devastated by this firestorm. California is working swiftly to ensure survivors from these devastating firestorms can begin their road to recovery.” The federal government has brought in funding to help in the recovery effort, as has other countries such as Canada, Mexico and Ukraine.
Get used to it: On Monday, January 20, 2025, US President-elect Donald Trump (a convicted felon) will become the second person to serve two non-consecutive terms as President of the United States. Special counsel Jack Smith’s final report lays out in no uncertain terms federal prosecutors’ position that Donald Trump — who is heading to the inauguration formalities on Monday, would have been convicted on multiple felonies for his alleged efforts to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 election, had voters not decided to send him back to the White House in the 2024 election.
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) is the only other US president to serve two non-consecutive terms. Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States serving from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897.
President-elect Trump will be the 45th and 47th US President. He is here. Actually, since losing the 2020 presidency to Joe Biden, he never left. He has been here all along; he never left. He has been occupying the news circuit in one form or another with statements about the 2020 elections having been stolen from him, to court cases about leaving office with classified documents or civil defamation or sexual abuse cases. There were times, people had to remind themselves that Joe Biden is US President, and his VP is that black woman (half Jamaican, half Indian but born in the USA).
Other news cycles flooding the news networks have been about the names or people the former and soon-to-be president of the US, has nominated for various cabinet positions. Many of his picks are either former television personalities, people with contrary views to the office they will occupy (example anti-vaccine Robert Kennedy for the health portfolio, or a national security advisor with ties to countries that are adversaries of the US, a former personal lawyer as the attorney-general, and many others).
Discussions on these nominations coupled with comments by the president-elect have been front and center of US news reports; they have pushed aside or to the back burner other news reports, such as the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Hamas.
With all these, humongous prayers for divine intervention are needed for the United States, which is normally dubbed “the leader of the democratic, free world.”
#PrayForAmerica!
This post was originally published on here
