I started to write about Obama. He is perhaps the first President in history who will complete four years in office and never have a budget approved by Congress. Yet in three years he has done what it took Bush-43 eight years to do. He has doubled the size of the federal government. He did it with two Congresses willing to give him continuing resolutions and emergency appropriations, and lacking the courage to hold firm on the debt ceiling. Obama is living his dream, and our nightmare: "We don't need no stinking budget."

I started to write about the ninety "firebrand" freshmen we sent to Congress last year and how many of them have already drunk the heady water of the Potomac. Even Alan West who went viral with a speech exhorting us to "fix bayonets" voted to increase the debt ceiling.

I started to write about the gross incompetence of the GOP leadership in Congress, but the Wall Street Journal has pretty well nailed that.

Instead, today I remind you that about 2,000 years ago, an angel appeared in a field near Bethlehem and said, "Do not be afraid, I bring you good news, news of great joy for the whole nation." My friends, we search in vain for politicians who will deliverer us from this time of trial. We will continue to search in vain until we surrender our vanity to reality. Like so many nations before us, we have lost our moral compass. We search in vain because we reject those who like our first president get down on their knees and pray for help from Divine Providence. We will search in vain until we do what Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and Roosevelt did when it looked like the Nation would not survive: pray for help and guidance from our Creator.

Whatever your faith, I ask you join me as I pray for our leaders, and for this great Nation, that we may become one Nation under God, that the peace of the Lord may rest on our shoulders and guide our thoughts, our words, and our actions, and those of our elected representatives in the year ahead. Pray that once again, in God may we trust.

Refresh yourselves in the good news of Advent, because we have a lot of hard work to do in the year ahead.

Keep the faith,

Bob McConnell

beawatchman@aol.com