Time for a hug?

In what has been perhaps the most vitriolic presidential campaign in history, a campaign marred by thunderbolts of verbal assaults, a campaign in which a candidate’s viability is apparently gauged not by a vision for the future of our nation but by how much he/she attacks and is attacked---recall Ben Carson’s quip in the last Republican debate: "Can somebody attack me please?"----perhaps everyone needs to take a deep breath, slow down, and dare I say it? Give each other a hug.

It would be miraculous, I admit.

A jaw-dropping, epochal event, for sure.

The news would be…HUGE.

But think what Republican and Democratic candidates could do in restoring hope to a political process that appears to have gone awry if they would join each other in something as simple as a group hug.

We might once again have hope that a dysfunctional Congress could actually work together for the betterment of those who elected them.

It might restore hope that the President, whomever he or she may be, could seek and gain agreements for the betterment of our country, despite the differences defining the rivals that coalesce on those policies.

I know I’m asking for the unimaginable, but surely, wherever there’s a hug, there is hope.

That truth was in fact evidenced on the campaign trail a couple of weeks ago when Republican presidential candidate, John Kasich, gave a hug to a distressed supporter. His name was Brett Smith, a 21-year-old University of Georgia student.

“Over a year ago, a man who was like my second dad, he killed himself,” Smith, speaking with a quivering voice, told Kasich at a town hall meeting. “And then a few months later, my parents got a divorce, and then a few months later, my dad lost his job. And I was in a really dark place for a long time. I was pretty depressed.”

“But I found I hope,” he continued. “And I found it in the Lord, and in my friends, and now I’ve found it in my presidential candidate that I support. And I’d really appreciate one of those hugs you’ve been talking about.”

Kasich responded by embracing the young man, whispering to him, “The Lord will give you strength, I promise you, if you ask him.”

It was a touching moment, for evidences of hope touch that deepest part of us, our heart.

Theologian Emil Brunner said, “What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.”

And Reverend C. Neil Strait underscored the importance of hope when he said: “Take from a man his wealth, and you hinder him; take from him his purpose, and you slow him down. But take from man his hope, and you stop him.”

That’s because we can survive without wealth, and perhaps without a purpose, at least for a while.

But without hope we are… hopeless.

People everywhere, like that young man who spoke to Kasich, are hurting, bearing up under the burden of life.

I know that many Christian believers like myself---we, whom some candidates are courting for a vote---could affirm with the hymn writer of another day, that “Our hope is built on nothing less/Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” and not on any politician or cadre of them. Neither is our hope ultimately in the political process itself.

And by the time you read this, Super Tuesday, 2016, will be history. The group hug may have dwindled to a precious few.

But it sure would be astonishing, nonetheless, for whomever remains in the race, be they Democrat or Republican, if they would, like John Kasich did to that young man, slow down, show a gentler heart, and give one of those hugs.

Even to those who aren’t the candidate’s supporters or potential donors.

Perhaps even to their opponents.

That would be evidence not just of hope in our country’s future.

That would be a demonstration of grace.

Amazing grace.

But, then, that’s another subject.