AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

"...and who knoweth whether thou are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"  (from Esther 4:14)

Dear Mr. President:

Greetings!

I want to say right up front that I like you, and I voted for you.  And, I still like you.  Today, I felt so strongly I needed to write you this letter.  Instead of sending it to The White House by the U.S. Postal Service I decided to post it as an open letter.  I sincerely hope a lot of people will go to this link; that the letter will be brought to your attention and that you will read it.

My name is Bob Baril.  I'm sixty-three-years-old.  I'm an Ordained minister, although currently I'm not pastoring a church.  I've worked several secular jobs over the past few years, and I'm currently unemployed.  Honestly, I've had kind of an unpleasant week; and over the past few days, I'd sunken into an attitude and a pattern that's not healthy:  I began focusing on all of the "negatives" in my life, and I began very much "feeling sorry for myself".  Ironically, it's the prompting and urgency to write you this letter that has lifted me into a much more positive and hopeful attitude, and so I thank God for that; and in a sense I even thank you for that!

During the early days of your campaign for the Republican nomination for President, I very much didn't like you!  I thought you were, to use a line from the film, Beverly Hills Cop, a "foul-mouthed jerk"!  In fact, at the time, I wrote a very strong anti-Trump piece on my blog saying that no evangelical should vote for you.  I had some verbal disagreements with friends about this, but I was adamant that I would never vote for you.  I certainly forgot the old admonition to, "never say 'never'!"

Eventually, I became quite embarrassed and ashamed that I'd written and posted that piece on my blog, and I took it down!  The biggest factor that turned me from an "anti-Trumper" to a "pro-Trumper" was your choice of Mike Pence as your running mate.  The second biggest factor was your speech at the 2016 Republican convention accepting the nomination.  Yes, there were still a number of things about your demeanor that I didn't care for, but I came to see that what you stood for was far superior to anything that Hillary Clinton and the liberal Democrats were advocating.  I became convinced we needed you in The White House.  Yes, it was rather ironic that I cast my vote for Trump-Pence that autumn!

It certainly seemed like there was no way you could win that election!  I believed the polls which said Hillary would win in a landslide.  But, there was also something else in the back of my mind.  Way back around the time I'd posted that anti-Trump piece on my blog, a fine man that I know- a farmer in his seventies who is also named Bob- told me emphatically that God had spoken to him and clearly revealed to him that Donald Trump would be elected President.  Bob Muzzy is one of those, "salt of the earth" and "give you the shirt off his back" kind of guys!  There's absolutely no "flakiness" in that man.  And, yes, he was proven right!

In the final weeks of 2016 we heard all of that, "Not My President" protesting.  A female activist in Canton, Massachusetts wrote not one but several letters to the local newspaper denouncing you.  And, I did something I never thought I would be doing:  I wrote the paper a rebuttal letter in support of you.  Yet, you remind me of that little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead that some of us remember from our days of listening to nursery rhymes.  Like her, when you're good, you're very, very good; and when you're bad you're horrid!

Again, Mr. President, I like you.  And, I like you enough to tell you the truth.  I don't think you're a racist and I don't really think you're all the bad things that your enemies accuse you of being.  But that whole, "s - - thole" thing was, well, off the wall!

That verse I quoted from above comes from the Book of Esther.  It was a line that Mordecai, a wise and mature Jewish man spoke to his young cousin Esther who was the Queen of the Persian Empire.   The fate of the Jewish people hung in the balance.  He was letting her know that if she did nothing she wasn't going to just skate by, as it were.  She had to have amazing courage and she had to have amazing faith and she had to have amazing wisdom and she had to have amazing class- that's what it would take to save the Jewish people.  Our only Savior is truly The Lord Jesus Christ, but He does use human vessels.  If you saw how little I have in my retirement fund, you'd probably laugh.  But you're a wealthy and successful businessman.  You're a smart man.  You're a man who has accomplished much in life.  You're a man who has accomplished great things in the past.  But you've got to remember something that comes from Matthew chapter sixteen verse ten.  That verse exhorts us to be, "...wise as serpents and harmless as doves".  Mr. President, that "s - - thole" thing and other remarks like that just don't fall into the category of  "...wise as serpents and harmless as doves".  If I were your pastor, I'd recommend you sit down with Vice-President Pence and a couple of copies of this letter and ask for his input and prayer.  No matter what your detractors say, you can end up being the greatest President this country has ever had!  I'm serious.  But you've got to function as God wants you to, and not the way you're used to functioning!

I hope this will be helpful to you.

And, since this is an open letter, I will say to all Americans:  Please don't bash President Trump.  Instead please pray for him.

In Christ's love,
BOB BARIL