We are at a turning
point in our national history. The direction we finally take at that turning
point will not come from a perceived victory in a political battle.  It will be the outcome of the highest form of
spiritual warfare. How we wage this battle will determine our future and record
our history.

I have had the
honor to visit many nations, each with a diverse history. One of the more
unusual histories was found in the nation of Albania. Albania was a very
restricted and closed nation within the old Communist Bloc. Today, the nation
is reinventing itself through trade and diplomacy.

Under Communist
rule, Albania was led by Enver Hoxha. Hoxha was a very a repressive and paranoid
leader who governed one of the most depressed and poverty-stricken nations in
the world. Hoxha used fear to control his people trying to convince them they
had it so good the outside world was about to invade Albania at any moment and
take their meager portion.

As a result of this
delusion, a campaign began to construct defensive concrete bunkers to repel the
invaders. To this day, scattered throughout the landscape of Albania, are thousands
of military bunkers strategically pointing outward toward the borders of the
nation in preparation for an imagined invasion. In 1983 there were 173,371 of
these bunkers in a nation with a landmass approximately the size of New
Hampshire. Many of the bunkers still remain to this day.

When I recall the mental
image of the bunkers I saw in Albania twenty years ago, they remind me of where
our nation finds itself at this point in our history. There is a great deal of
suspicion coursing through nation. Bunkers of distrust and fear are being
erected in each political camp facing outward toward the opposing party. This
is being fed by the seductive words being offered to us by a political spirit. God
is asking us to build bridges, not bunkers. When fear is allowed to run rampant
imaginary enemies created by our partisan politics cross our mental borders blinding
us to the invasion of the real enemy – fear.

There will come a
day when the remains of our fear will appear to those who study our history like
the abandoned concrete bunkers I saw each time I visited Albania. Each of us have
limited time and resources. Use those gifts wisely to build bridges of hope,
not bunkers of fear. The bridges you build will be used by God to usher in the
hope required to accomplish God’s will in our nation and in every nation on
Earth. The bridges of our hope or the bunkers of our fear will become the
record of our history. The choice of that history is ours to write.