"Hope and change" or "A revolution of the unseen"

*author's note* This will undoubtedly be a controversial piece of literature. I ask that you suspend response until you have read the whole article and carefully considered the thesis. However, I would love to discuss this so that we can learn .
Peace,
Michael

Today, over a million people participated in what is being called one of the most significant events in the history of the United States. As countless eyes watched, and as countless ears listened, Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States of America. The most intriguing thing was not the actual events of the inauguration, but the response. We have become even more polarized as a society, a schizophrenic collective of voices, responding either with euphoria or deep trepidation. Even the news anchors seemed trapped in the moment, forgetting their typical journalistic stolidity. As I did a online surmisal of the electronic world, the response of those "inside" the movement of Jesus seems to be of the same polarized extremity.
I don't get it.

To be perfectly honest, I feel nothing in regards to what happened today. The reins of power to a kingdom were handed to a different figure head. A different group of fallible humans will now spend the next four years trying to convince the "Kings and Queens" of the general public to support their policies. So be it, for this is the way of the world as long as anyone can remember. I fear we have forgotten, or maybe never learned the lesson as old as time: anything begun by man will ultimately come to wreck and ruin. If history has taught us anything, it is that every one of us is hopelessly broken and fundamentally flawed. The democracy of the United States will ultimately destroy itself in the same implosion that felled the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans - sin. Ultimately, given the same choice, we (humans, collectively) will make the same choice that we always have - to believe lies, do evil, and choose self over love. Am I saying this as a pessimist, chuckling cynically as the world goes to hell? Absolutely not. There is a hope -an ignored, reviled, rejected hope...
Enter Jesus.

Once there was a man, a man who claimed to be the Son of God, and a King. Yet He said "my Kingdom does not originate from this world", that in His kingdom "the least is the greatest".
He taught that the only laws that mattered were "Love God with everything", and "Love your neighbor as yourself". He claimed that His Kingdom was about relationship and community, about the outsider, the opressed, and the broken. He claimed that in His Kingdom, there were no citizenship requirements, no borders, and no systems. He invited everyone to be part of this Kingdom, to be part of restoring creation back to it's intended purpose...

This man was Jesus Christ, He is the Son of God, the rightful King, and He invites you to swear allegiance to His Kingdom. He came for you! He said "come if you're weary, come and rest", that He came to set the oppressed free, give sight to the blind. He is the only hope, as He broke the power of evil by by His death, and He rose to bring us the hope of the Kingdom, and the only hope for change...
New life.

What if real hope is not in the next president? Indeed, what if the next president is ultimately inconsequential, like a human puppet in a cosmic war between good and evil? What if the only real hope for humanity came 2000 years ago on a bloody cross as God gave His life for man? What if the only true change started with the One, the Messiah, freeing hearts, and revolutionizing lives? What if the only response that will bring hope and change is when I start living the implications of the words and the Way of Jesus out in my life?

"People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." -Hebrew 11:14-16 (NIV)