Well, howdy...

Today’s reflection is on cleanliness, which is appropriate because I must clean up a small mess. Yesterday’s Texas Minute had a goof: the lone state senator not seeking re-election is actually José Rodríguez (D-El Paso). I apologize for the confusion.

Here is today's error-free – I hope! – Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, December 6, 2019
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• All of us on the team looking forward to tomorrow night’s sold-out Conservative Leaders Gala. Monday’s Texas Minute will focus on the awardees.
       
• City officials in Austin have a new plan for their homelessness crisis: spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars creating hotels for the homeless. Yes, it is as bad – and as costly – as it sounds. Jacob Asmussen has the details.
   
• In a new commentary, activist Stacy Roberts shares how West Texans once again defeated a boomerang bond measure, but not without experiencing legal intimidation from pro-bond proponents.
   

• As Stacy explains: “Earlier this year, the Pecos-Barstow-Toyah Independent School District, which has a current student population of around 3,300 kids, proposed a bond on the May election ballot for a staggering $400 million. You read that correctly, $400 million in spending for 3,300 students, and supported by a taxpayer base of only around 20,000 people—a tremendous amount of debt distributed among a tiny tax base in a boom-and-bust economy. Taxpayers rejected the proposed debt at the ballot box, but that didn’t stop PBTISD officials from immediately proposing another atrocious bond for the ensuing November election date—this time for $357 million.”

       
• Check out the latest edition of Texas Scorecard Radio. Tony McDonald is joined by former State Rep. Jason Isaac of the Texas Public Policy Foundation; they discuss the costly environmental policies leftists are imposing on our cities. Even if Texas Scorecard Radio isn’t broadcast where you are, every edition is available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, and Stitcher.
        
• Please join me in wishing a very happy 21st birthday to my daughter Rae! (Yes, dad is taking it hard especially since she is studying overseas this semester; it’s the first time we have not been with her.)

Friday Reflection

Cleanliness, our mothers all told us, is next to godliness. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that ever motivated me to actually clean my room as a kid. (Sorry, mom!)

Thanks to sin, none of us – like petulant children before bedtime – really want to be clean on our own. But thanks to God, we can be.

The notion of cleanliness pervades Scripture, specifically the realization that none of us are clean enough by God’s standards. That’s why a tree-lined bend along the Jordan River is so meaningful. It’s the place recognized as where John baptized his cousin, Jesus.

Jesus’ baptism marked the beginning of His public ministry. On the one hand, it seems strange that Jesus – literally, the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, the Messiah – “needed” to be baptized. But that even He was points to our own need.

Let’s be clear: Baptism isn’t about physical cleanliness, but rather the state of our heart. Just as a dirty room cannot clean itself (another mom-based truism), neither can our dirty hearts. Making our spiritual lives “clean” takes an act of God, as expressed outwardly by the act of baptism.

John Adams once wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” So if we want to clean up government, let’s pray for a cleansing revival of the people. 

A dirty room won’t clean itself, and neither will a dirty government.