KEY POINTS:
Barack Hussein Obama is a man. He is not the Messiah; he is not divine. But in a very real sense his message is messianic, for he brings to his nation and the world the one thing without which life is meaningless - and that is hope.
And for once, thank God, the hope that so many millions in the United States and the world share as Mr Obama takes on the most important - and onerous - job in the world is not in his rhetoric, but in the man himself.
For here is a man of the people; thus there is no better choice for the task of presiding over a government which should be - but too often has not been - in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "of the people, by the people, for the people".
No silver spoon adorned his mouth when he was born; no vast dynastic wealth was his for the asking.
Rather, he is what we often call a self-made man, which is never really true, for all of those who drag themselves up by their bootstraps receive help from someone along the way, in Mr Obama's case his maternal grandmother.
He is highly intelligent, articulate, a thinker with a well-developed world view, an idealist, a man of faith, compassionate and inspirational.
This is in marked contrast to most of the presidents who have ruled in my lifetime, but particularly to the arrogant, ignorant, empty-headed immediate past-president, led by the nose for eight long years by a bunch of ruthless, greedy and unscrupulous neo-conservatives.
Mr Obama is so inspirational, in fact, that he caused me to stumble out of bed at an ungodly hour yesterday morning to turn on the television and watch as he became the United States' 44th president, something I have never done in my life. I'm glad I did, for it was an occasion of immense significance - even, perhaps, a pivotal point in our history.
It was, as one CNN commentator put it, "not so much a transition as a transformation". And how we all hope, and many of us pray, that it is indeed, that the US and the world are at a turning point, that in spite of the daunting difficulties, President Obama will have the wit, the courage, the stamina, the perseverance to prevail.
There is plenty of room to believe that he will, for most of all he is a man of vision, and, as the Book of Proverbs says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish ..."
The US is perishing. As an old and dear American friend wrote to me the other day: "American automakers on the brink of extinction, the housing market in tatters, college tuition fees up 24 per cent in a year and now unreachable by too many, healthcare out of sight, banks and financial institutions in ruins, medicine prices up 100 per cent, and the US' moral authority totally squandered ...
"What can you expect when you live in a country that uses torture, ignores human rights, lies in the United Nations, ignores basic science and makes all its decisions based on bankrupt political ideology, not facts or rational thought?
"The world has certainly turned. Can this be the same country that twice elected G.W. Bush?"
Which is fascinating, really, for the rest of the Proverb quoted above reads: "... but he that keeps the law, happy is he".
And Lincoln at Gettysburg called on those present to ensure that the democracy he described "shall not perish from the earth".
How wonderful it was to see in that hugely significant, solemn yet joyful event, attended and watched by millions, an unashamed acknowledgement of God, not just in the comprehensive prayers which were so much part of the inauguration ceremony, but in the words of the man himself.
In the peroration to his inaugural address, Mr Obama proclaimed: "Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."
My prayer - and there were tears in my eyes as I listened to the United States' national anthem - is that God in his mercy has heard, that he will grant the forgiveness sought by the Reverend Joseph Lowery in his benediction, and that he will pour out his anointing upon the one he has chosen to lead the world's most powerful nation.
Yet ... yet ... the question niggles: Is Obama in fact - like Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt, for example - the man for the hour? We shall, with optimism and hope, have to wait and see.
garth.george@hotmail.com
