Between Cassandra and Pollyanna

Psalm 22 begins on a negative note, but ends on a positive one. This is how we often live life — between Cassandra and Pollyanna. 

Future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.--Psalm 22:30b-31.


When he was running for president against the incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan discovered a question that had powerful resonance on the campaign trail: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Standing before the microphones, Reagan asked it again and again. He won a resounding victory.

Once elected, President Reagan was famous for his sunny optimism. But as a candidate, he knew that cultivating a relentless pessimism -- and taking every opportunity to pin the evidence for that gloomy outlook on his opponent -- was a first-class ticket to the Oval Office.

The Gipper's question is still compelling: "Are we better off today than we were four years ago ... or 10 ... or a generation?"

Lots of people today would answer that question, "No." Every day's news bulletins are dripping with bad news. The cascade of negative data...