Ruth Schwartz , an overworked corporate attorney on an earlybird flight from New York to Chicago, slips in her earbuds and eases into her “airtrance” playlist when the music abruptly stops. God is speaking to her through the voice of Chris Martin. I want you to deliver a message to the Democratic Party.
Right. All Ruth wanted was to make it through her three-city day of client meetings and go to bed at least a few hours before the next day started—perhaps with the handsome colleague she’d been texting with lately.
But now THIS. She must be losing her mind. A flight attendant shakes her shoulder—could she please keep it down? She’s been shouting profanities.
Ruth slips the earbuds back in and is relieved to hear U2 instead of Coldplay. Then the music stops again. “Hi Ruth. Maybe this voice works better?” Oh great. Now God’s got an Irish accent?
“Of course, I don’t,” Bono says. “My first language is light and hydrogen . . . but I can accommodate to human speech. You should hear how I speak to whales and impala. They’re much better listeners than you, by the way.”
She freaks and shuts off her playlist. But God will not be thwarted. In a trancelike state, Ruth opens her laptop and types:
To: All Democrats in the USA
From: The Lord
Subject: My Word to You
Date: It’s a Beautiful Day
. . . paragraph after paragraph, until the airplane begins its descent and anything with an on/off switch has to be shut down.
Hours later in her Chicago meeting, Ruth gets the email address of the city’s mayor, a former staffer for President Obama. While in the Sky Lounge before her flight to Atlanta, she sends him a message headed, “From a fellow Jew, a message from God.” She attaches the memo to Democrats, hoping he can get it to the Administration, and hits “send.”
When she deplanes in the gate area of the Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the FBI is waiting for her. So is the media, and a chain of events she could never have imagined. . . .
THE WORD OF THE LORD TO DEMOCRATS helps Americans, regardless of party affiliation, sift through the polemical rancor of the 2012 presidential elections and recover what has been lost to elected officials whose interests are controlled by their financial supporters.
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. His groundbreaking books include A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, The Secret Message of Jesus, and Everything Must Change. Named by Time magazine as one of America's top twenty-five evangelicals, McLaren has appeared on Nightline and Larry King Live, and has been covered by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Right. All Ruth wanted was to make it through her three-city day of client meetings and go to bed at least a few hours before the next day started—perhaps with the handsome colleague she’d been texting with lately.
But now THIS. She must be losing her mind. A flight attendant shakes her shoulder—could she please keep it down? She’s been shouting profanities.
Ruth slips the earbuds back in and is relieved to hear U2 instead of Coldplay. Then the music stops again. “Hi Ruth. Maybe this voice works better?” Oh great. Now God’s got an Irish accent?
“Of course, I don’t,” Bono says. “My first language is light and hydrogen . . . but I can accommodate to human speech. You should hear how I speak to whales and impala. They’re much better listeners than you, by the way.”
She freaks and shuts off her playlist. But God will not be thwarted. In a trancelike state, Ruth opens her laptop and types:
To: All Democrats in the USA
From: The Lord
Subject: My Word to You
Date: It’s a Beautiful Day
. . . paragraph after paragraph, until the airplane begins its descent and anything with an on/off switch has to be shut down.
Hours later in her Chicago meeting, Ruth gets the email address of the city’s mayor, a former staffer for President Obama. While in the Sky Lounge before her flight to Atlanta, she sends him a message headed, “From a fellow Jew, a message from God.” She attaches the memo to Democrats, hoping he can get it to the Administration, and hits “send.”
When she deplanes in the gate area of the Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the FBI is waiting for her. So is the media, and a chain of events she could never have imagined. . . .
THE WORD OF THE LORD TO DEMOCRATS helps Americans, regardless of party affiliation, sift through the polemical rancor of the 2012 presidential elections and recover what has been lost to elected officials whose interests are controlled by their financial supporters.
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. His groundbreaking books include A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, The Secret Message of Jesus, and Everything Must Change. Named by Time magazine as one of America's top twenty-five evangelicals, McLaren has appeared on Nightline and Larry King Live, and has been covered by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
