If you have listened very much to the speeches of the presidential candidates, you will have heard this word quite a lot. Both political parties use the word to indict the other parties’ candidate as being “out of touch” with particular groups.

 

The charges and counter charges go back and forth that each candidate is disconnected from the American people and doesn’t understand the problems much less the answers for the manifold challenges the average American citizen faces.

 

It certainly is a serious charge and presents a sad situation when the leaders are disconnected from the citizens of a nation, but it is far more serious when a nation is disconnected from God.

 

When Solomon dedicated the temple he had built according to the commandments of the Lord and he prayed such a powerful prayer in 2 Chronicles chapter 6, God responded in 2 Chron. 7:19, 20. “But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, and worship them, then I will uproot them from My land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for My name, I will cast out of My sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations.”

 

In 1630, when John Winthrop stood on the deck of the Arbella off the coast of Massachusetts and spoke to the little band of pilgrims, I believe he was using the above Scripture as a basis for this comment: “We shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

 

When Ronald Reagan made his official announcement for the presidency on November 13, 1979, he quoted John Winthrop, and then responded to Winthrop’s warning with this statement: “A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-sacrifice, morality, and—above all—responsible liberty for every individual; that we will become that shining city on a hill.”

 

Whether we become a “byword throughout the world,” or whether we keep our “rendezvous with destiny” by becoming that “shining city on a hill” will depend upon whether we stay connected to the God who has kept this nation under the mantle of His divine protection or whether we become disconnected from Him.

 

If we are now disconnected as the evidence seems to indicate, then we should follow His admonition in 2 Chron. 7:14. “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 will forgive their sin and heal their land.”