Don't repeat past mistakes
Dueteronomy 17:14-20
A Friend in Panama sends just now. He is just by the Panama Canal sending Wisdom written more than 2,000 years ago. That we not repeat mistakes. Yet most people never will know, and will repeat mistakes, and will be slaves and war slaves and fertilizer for evil men who profit from stabbing children with poisons: —-
Deuteronomy 17:14-20
“When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.
“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.
God originally pleaded with the people NOT to choose a King to rule over them. He urged them to stay with the structure HE had provided them--that of judges in a righteous Kingdom. But, oh no, they had to be doing what everyone else around them was doing--choosing kings. So God gave them what they wanted. Such is a universal truth from God--agency. Every choice has consequences. God needs us to learn from these choices and these consequences. WE need to learn as well. There is a better way. Choose the higher road.
George Washington was such a man who was able to turn away from total control twice. Once when the Congress fled and he became the supreme commander. Actually a dictator, he gave it back as quickly as possible. Then when they wanted to actually make him king, which he said NEVER speak of again.
We could sure use another Washington...