Humility in Leadership: A Lesson from the Life of Dwight D. Eisenhower<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
In the process of moving to NYC to expand our apologetic street ministries, I drove through <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Kansas this week. I saw an exit for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center and decided to take a tour. It was an experience I will never forget. God humbled me, as I studied this man's humility as a world renowned leader.
 
From being everybody's hero as General in World War II, to becoming President of the United States, I was told "the job sought the man." I was sobered as I watched a film on his life and read more about his testimony of character.
 
When Ike was young, his dad worked eighty-four hours a week at a creamery, bringing home ten dollars a week for the family. All of the way to the White House, Ike never left his roots. He said he had no greater honor than to be from Abilene, Kansas.
 
Here are some more interesting facts about Dwight D. Eisenhower:
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/favorite.htm
 
The "D" stands for David, his "Christian" name, as the tour guide explained at the museum. David was actually his first name, but he reversed it to go by Dwight.
 
His motto was: "Gently in Manner -- Strongly in Deed"
 
Although he expressed no real "favorite" Bible verse, the Bible was open to the following passages during his inaugurations: 1953 Inauguration: Psalm 127:1 & 2 Chronicles 7:14; 1957 Inauguration: Psalm 33:12; (Mamie Eisenhower's favorite: 91st Psalm)
 
Favorite books were: The Bible, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Works of Shakespeare
 
Favorite hymns were: O God Our Help in Ages Past; Abide With Me; God of Our Fathers; Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (Battle Hymn of the Republic); A Mighty Fortress is Our God; My Country 'Tis of Thee; God Moves in a Mysterious Way; America the Beautiful; God of Our Life; I Love to Tell the Story
 
Camp David was named after his son, David, who died as a toddler.
 
Ike was a Presbyterian (before anyone had to ask, "USA or PCA?"). The family Bible is on display in the home where he was raised in Abilene for the young visitors who tour the home, finding themselves challenged to live a more simple life for God's glory in the 21st century. Young visitors like me.
 
They leave mesmerized, not by highly technological television sets, palm pilots, I-pods, and flat screen computers, not by scholarly degrees hanging on the wall, not by worldly accolades on display, or the wealth of fine china and fashionable attire the family wore, but by the warmth felt in that home from the quilts made by hand and the little stove built to keep the family from freezing on cold Kansas nights.
 
Visitors leave the little home of six rooms where six boys were raised and return to their walk-in closets (a closet the size of a room in this small house) and single family homes, which are mansions in comparison, with no thick family Bibles on display anymore as prized possessions in family living rooms, in neighborhoods where they don't know the names of their neighbors, caught up in the rush of never having enough.
 
And I could have wept as I drove away from that place, as I found myself missing so deeply a life I never knew and an America I still hold dear.
 
After touring the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center and reading about his life and character, I wondered where or if we could ever find another leader for this country like him. I turned on the radio and listened to the latest talk shows concerning the candidates in the current election process, and it was surreal as I heard about the issues of cloning and stem cell debates, driving back to I-70 on the flag-lined, little road from the Eisenhower museum in Kansas. I listened as it was reported on the radio that now transvestites can use public restrooms in NYC "consistent with their gender preference." And so it goes in the culture of America in October, 2006 with all of her "panic attacks" inside and out.
 
I wish we could go back, but the old adage rings melancholy and true, you can't go home again. I will always miss the era of Dwight D. Eisenhower and what it represents to me. America sure did feel a lot more like home to me back then, before America's New Age when Americans had respect for the Bible as a culture, and no one had to ask, "Which one? Which Bible?" When people believed in God and didn't dream of asking, "Do you mean energy or consciousness or the God of the Bible?" Or, "Are you a Christian who calls God 'mother'?" Or, "Hymn? What is a hymnal?"
 
"Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late to eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved, even in his sleep." Psalm 127:1-2
 
"Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance." Psalm 33:12
 
Ike was buried in 1969 in Abilene with his wife, Maime, and son, David. He passed away and was buried there the year I was born.
 
I miss the days I never knew, but our God is the God of history. I can praise Him to be an American Christian for such a time as this, to make a stand for His name in a country with a rich heritage of faith in the God of our fathers, living for heaven-a Land where politics and the art of compromise will be no more, where the elect are not of this world.
 
Dwayna Litz
www.ltwinternational.org