The Biggest Thing to happen this week will not be the election

Of course you know about the War of the Fifth Coalition.  Its importance can hardly be over estimated.  A tyrant was on the march again and the alliance of five powers was all that opposed him.  The campaigns of this war would range for over 600 miles.  Nearly 200,000 casualties would be lost in this war.   As you can well imagine it was the most important subject of any and every occasion.  With the aid of Google, can you tell me any of the details of this war?

This week we will, mercifully, come to the end of this Presidential election cycle.  Both sides have told us that if their opposition is elected it will mean the end of our nation, perhaps western civilization, perhaps even the world.  I have heard that this is the biggest election ever and nothing could be more important than what happens Tuesday.  Some feel that this may be the most important event in 100 years.  Really?

Sounds like the war news that fluttered about the War of the Fifth Coalition. 

·      Have you heard of Charles Darwin who reshaped the very way we think about life?

·      We might note the influence of Robert Winthrop who said: "Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet."

·      Perhaps you have ever felt the raised bumps of a language developed by Louis Braille.

·      Maybe you were intrigued by the dark poems and stories of Edger Allen Poe.

·      I am sure that you have a richer diet and a fuller panty because of the work of Cyrus McCormick who, by inventing the mechanical reaper, helped propagate unfathomable abundance.

·      Speaking of Presidents, was your life shaped by one name, Abraham Lincoln?

What do these profound influencers have to do with the War of the Fifth Coalition?  Only time.  While the world was wringing it hands about a series of battles and believing it was the end of civilization, these men were being born.  The great events of 1809 were not battles in Austria, but births in private.  Not a conflict of nations, but the first breathes of infants.  Like them or not, all of these people have had a more profound influence on you than the campaigns of distant armies.

In Luke 3:1-2 we read: Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.  In this passage we read about seven powerful people from the emperor to the high priest.  But what really mattered was that God’s word came to a guy living in a desert.

I am not saying don’t vote, nor who to vote for, but rather, remember the big events are rarely what we expect.  The biggest event of this century, decade, year, or week most likely will not happen Tuesday, but if it does, it may be at the local birthing center not the ballot box.

Oh, and the rampaging tyrant was the Little General Napoleon aided by Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Józef Antoni Poniatowski, Maximilian Joseph, and Frederick Augustus Joseph Maria Anthony John Nepomuk Aloysius Xavier.  All house hold names I know.