Jimmy Carter's Daily Devotions Provide Insight into His Life and Presidency

What can we learn by reflecting on the daily devotions of Jimmy Carter?
Many of his daily devotions include interesting comments on both his life and
historical incidents that happened before, after, and during his presidency, and
several humorous stories.
Jimmy Carter reflects on his youth, his years in the Navy serving in the nuclear
submarine program, his years as Governor of Georgia, and his years before, during,
and after his Presidency.
Jimmy Carter reflects on the Camp David Peace Accords, negotiated with
Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, pictured in our thumbnail.
Jimmy Carter reflects on his dealings with the leaders of other foreign countries,
including China, Iran, Uganda, Greece, and Saudi Arabia.
Jimmy carter also reflects on the civil rights and humanitarian efforts during his
youth, during his service in the Navy, and during his terms as Governor of Georgia
and as President, and afterwards.

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
We will read excerpts from Jimmy Carter’s 366 Daily
Devotional for each day of the week, we encourage
you to purchase it for yourself.
Please feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint
script we uploaded to SlideShare.

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Humorous Devotions of Jimmy Carter

Day 51. “I heard a story about a
priest from New Orleans named
Father Flanagan. His parish was
close to many taverns. One
night, he was walking down the
street and saw a drunk thrown
out of a pub, one of Father
Flanagan’s parishioners named
Mike. “Father Flanagan shook
the dazed man.”
Tavern Scene, by James Flewitt Mullock, 1883

Day 51. (continued) “Mike opened his eyes
and father Flanagan said, ‘You’re in trouble! Is
there anything I can do for you?’
‘Well, father,’ Mike replied, ‘I hope you’ll pray
for me.’
‘Yes,’ the priest answered, ‘I’ll pray for you
right now.’
He knelt down in the gutter and prayed,
‘Father, please have mercy on this drunken
man.’
At this a startled Mike woke up fully and said,
‘Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.’”
Tavern Scene, by David Teniers the Younger, 1658

Day 77. A good friend told Jimmy Carter a
great story about how a “man and his dog
were walking along a hot paved road when
suddenly the man realized that he was dead
and the dog beside him had been dead for
several years.
The pair came to a tall arch glowing in the
sunlight with a gate that resembled mother
of Pearl. They saw a man at a desk and a
sparkly sign that read, HEAVEN. The traveler
requested to come in for some water for his
dog, but the man said they didn’t accept pets.
So, the traveler and his dog walked on.

Eventually, they came to a narrow dirt road
leading to a farm gate and saw a man
leaning against a tree. The traveler asked
for some water, and the man gave both
him and the dog a cool drink. The traveler
learned that this place was heaven, and
that the first place was hell. He asked,
‘Doesn’t it make you angry that they use
your name like that?’
‘Nope,’ said the man, ‘we’re just happy
that they screen out the folks who would
leave their best friends behind.’”

Day 138. “Shortly after arriving in a small
town, a new pastor had to conduct a
funeral. In preparation,” he visited “the
barbershop, the grocery store and
everywhere else, asking for nice things to
say about the deceased, but he couldn’t
find anyone who would say anything good
about him. In desperation, when the funeral
service started, the pastor invited the
members of the congregation to speak up
for the deceased. A long silence followed
and finally he asked, ‘Can’t anyone say
anything?’ Someone stood up in the back
and said, ‘His brother was worse.’”
Funeral Procession, Pieter Jozef Verhaghen, 1811

Jimmy Carter Reflects on His Youth

JIMMY CARTER REFLECTS ON HIS YOUTH
Jimmy Carter was born in 1924 in rural Plains,
Georgia, to a cotton farmer. Although his father
was a segregationist, he permitted his son to play
with the children of the nearby black farmhands.

Day 219. “When I worked
in the fields with my
father, it would have been
inconceivable for a white
person to drink from the
same dipper as a black
worker in the same field,
even if we played with
him, went fishing with
them, worked in the same
fields and plowed with
the same mules. We
would never drink out of
the same cup.”
Cabin Scene with Washing on Fence, William Aiken Walker, around 1900

“So, when Jesus asked the Samaritan
woman for a drink of water,” this is the
story of the women at the well in John,
“he was actually doing something
extremely significant, Jesus didn't have a
cup with him, so clearly, he intended to
drink out of her cup. Remember, the Jews
typically hated all Samaritans, and this
was a woman ostracized by her own
village, in effect, a whore. What a
startling demonstration against racial or
ethnic or religious prejudice!”
Icon of St Photine meeting Christ

In the tradition of the ancient church, the Samaritan
woman at the well was St Photine, whose
evangelism efforts earned her recognition as equal
to the apostles. Tradition holds that she was brought
before Emperor Nero to answer for her faith, she
was tortured and martyred when she was thrown
into a dry well.

Jesus and the
Samaritan
Woman at the
Well, by
Giacomo
Franceschini,
around 1800

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_woman_at_the_well

Day 204. “During almost ten
decades in the South and
throughout America very few of us,
even in our churches, condemned
or criticized total racial
segregation. We accepted the legal
premise of separate but equal. In
fact, our Plains brotherhood
meeting, every year or two, invited
some distinguished biblical scholar
from a prestigious seminary who
would prove to us from Scripture
that God had ordained the
separation of the races.”

Jimmy Carter Serves on Navy Submarines
USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine

JIMMY CARTER DURING HIS TIME IN THE NAVY
Jimmy Carter volunteered to serve in the Navy
submarines from 1946 to 1953, gaining expertise
in submarine nuclear power plants. During this
time, he supervised the tricky shutdown of a
nuclear reactor that experienced a partial
meltdown.

Day 95. When I went to the Naval
Academy, I had to abide by the
school’s very rigid standards. One of
them prohibited lying. If you were
caught lying, you were dismissed in
disgrace with no appeal. Truthfulness
was the most important thing. When
we returned from leave or vacation,
we had to sign a little form that
declared, I have not done these
things. You weren't expelled for doing
those things, you were expelled for
lying about them.
Jimmy Carter and Commanding Officer of USS Jimmy Carter submarine

Day 362. “As a young
man, I trained as a
submariner. To
qualify, I had to
ascend from the
bottom of a hundred-
foot-deep water tank.
In the dark, our
bodies were
subjected to extreme
pressure, which
scared all of us.
Crewmen of nuclear submarine ex-USS NAUTILUS under tow.

We had only a half-inch rope attached to the
bottom of the tank, with a buoy attached to the
top to lead us to the surface. Each of us had to
emerge from a high-pressure container and rise
a hundred feet, clamping the little line between
our feet to control how fast we rose. We had to
exhale constantly, and watch the bubbles in
front of us, so we would rise at the same rate. If
we went too slowly and got below the bubbles,
we would sink to the bottom and risk drowning.
If we went up too fast, we would get the bends.
I went from feeling fear and trepidation in the
dark and oppressive environment, to emerging
into brilliant light freedom in normal breathing. St. Augustine Freeing A Prisoner, Michael
Pacher, painted 1482
USS NAUTILUS during 2022 overhaul

Day 312. “In 1948, I was a submarine officer
when my commander-in-chief Harry
Truman ordered that segregation end in all
the armed forces. Later, a growing number
of citizens said racial prejudice is not right
and demanded that everyone be treated as
equals, men like my friend ambassador
Andy Young and the Reverend Martin
Luther King were willing to be jailed for
their convictions. Thousands joined them,
and eventually the Supreme Court ruled
against segregation, and our nation’s laws
changed because increasing numbers of
people finally said, ‘This is right.’”
Harry Truman at keel laying of the Nautilus, 1952

Day 223. “When I was leaving the
Navy in 1953, Rosalyn and I
traveled through Washington DC,
where racist congressman called
Tick Forrester hosted us. He
represented our district and was
famous for despising Jews,
Catholics, and Negroes. During a
tour of the Capitol, the
congressman deplored the passing
of a law that allowed public
housing to be built in his district. Bill Clinton awards the Presidential Medal of
Freedom to the Carters, 1999

“It upset him because some
government housing just
twenty miles south of Plains
was in the white folk's
community. He said that we all
know that as soon as these
cheap houses are built, all kinds
of poor people are going to
come in and destroy our town.
We said nothing, because we
ourselves had just been
accepted to live in public
housing, as we had little
money.”
Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale welcoming
Rosalynn Carter back from her Latin American trip, 1977

Jimmy Carter as Governor of Georgia
Florida Governor Reuben Greets Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter

JIMMY CARTER AS GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA
Jimmy Carter was elected to the Georgia state
legislature from 1963 through 1967 during the
early days of the civil rights movement. He lost the
race for Governor of Georgia in 1966 but was
elected in 1970 and served one term.

Day 31. Jimmy Carter remembers, “I
ran for governor” of Georgia “in 1966
and lost to a prominent
segregationist,” Lester Maddox.
“Afterward, I felt despondent and
alienated from God. My sister, Ruth
Carter Stapleton, world famous
evangelist, came to see me and
advised me to volunteer for what we
called a pioneer mission program.”

Martin Luther King Jr.'s childhood home
“I agreed and went to” several states “and
the poor neighborhoods of Atlanta. In
each place I spent a week going house to
house, visiting people, and explaining
them how to become a Christian.” “When
my traveling companion and I would walk
up from a stranger’s front porch, we
would kneel down and pray in public for
the Holy Spirit to be with us, with cars
driving past and people laughing at us.
Then we would knock on the door,
sometimes it got slammed in our faces,
sometimes we’d be invited in. In one town
in Pennsylvania, we saw forty-eight people
accept Christ in one week.”

Day 206. “As the new governor of Georgia, I
visited all state prisons with an enlightened
prison director. We entered cells and
assembly areas, spoke with the prisoners
and guards, and discovered some shocking
things.
Some inmates in the Reidsville state prison
had been in solitary confinement for as long
as ten years. No prisoners had received any
career planning and about 35% of them
were mentally retarded. In response, other
southern governors and I set a goal of
seeing how much we could improve the
prison systems.

In Georgia, we started giving every new
prisoner a psychiatric test, an aptitude test,
and an IQ test. Counselors learned what all
prisoners wanted to do after their release
and arranged training for their future
careers. Those eligible for parole were given
the opportunity to participate in an early
release program. I personally held training
courses in the state Senate chamber for
service club members who had volunteered
to serve as probation officers to visit
prisoners, and their families before release,
and agreed to find a job for the prisoners.
We governors competed over who achieved
the lowest prison populations.

Southern Chain Gang, 1903
Today, by contrast, the
competition throughout
America is over which
governor can have more
inmates in prison, and who
can have the most severe
penalties for crimes. The
result? We have more of our
people in prison than any
nation on earth.”

Jimmy Carter Runs For President In 1976

Day 236. “During my 1976
Presidential campaign, none of us
had any money.” Jimmy Carter was
truly a dark horse candidate. Jimmy
Carter continues, “To cover more
territory, we had seven family
campaigns going at once. Rosalyn,
me, our three adult sons with their
wives, my mother, and her sister
visited different places. Rosalyn and I
never campaigned together, I would
go to one state while she went to
another, as did our other family
members and volunteers.

Because we were so strapped for cash,
we had one simple rule: everyone staying
in a hotel had to pay the bill personally.
Whenever we got into a town, therefore,
we looked for a host family willing to take
us in for the night. Our practice helped us
to form wonderful and long-lasting
friendships with our many generous
hosts. Had we stayed in costly hotels, we
never would have had made such
delightful personal connections.

The first week after I moved
into the White House, we
had a reception for all the
gracious people who had
acted as hosts for my family,
we invited no one else.
More than seven hundred
people came. We gave each
of them a small brass plaque
that said: ‘A member of The
Carter Family spent the
night here.”
Rosalyn, Jimmy, and Amy Carter, South Lawn of the White House

Day 35. Many of us have troublesome siblings, and
Presidents are no exception. President Carter’s
brother was Billy Carter: his only claim to fame was
being brother of the President. He used this
notoriety to hawk a line of beer called Billy Beer.
“On his deathbed, my brother Billy called in one of
his good buddies from Plains and said, ‘Everybody
knows that I only have a few days to live. I don’t
want to die with something on my conscience. I
have to tell you in complete candor that your wife
and I have had an affair for the last three years.’
His friend his friend’s face dropped and gulped a
couple of times. Then Billy laughed and said, ‘No,
I’m just joking.’ That was Billy.

In real life, adultery is no laughing matter. In
fact, I almost lost the Presidential election
because of it. As a Sunday school teacher, I
felt qualified to explain what Christ had in
mind when he spoke about adultery. I said
that he was setting an example that would
force all of us to recognize our sinfulness. My
mistake was that I explained this to magazine
reporters,” and he’s referring to the infamous
Playboy interview, “who published my edited
remarks as an admission that I was constantly
unfaithful to my wife by thinking sexually
about other women. Once the magazine came
out, it was too late for me to correct the
misimpressions.”

President Jimmy Carter on Foreign Affairs

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Jimmy Carter faced many challenges in foreign
affairs. Our thumbnail features his Camp David
Middle East peace negotiations with the Israeli
leader, Menachem Begin, and the Egyptian leader
Anwar Sadat. He also negotiated the Panama
Canal treaty and the Salt II Nuclear Arms
Reduction Treaty with Russia, plus the Iranian
hostage crisis.

Day 270. Jimmy Carter remembers the Camp
David negotiations. “During my presidency, three
devout men met for peace talks at Camp David:
Menachem Begin, a Jew, Anwar Sadat, a Muslim,
and me a Christian. Sadat had a brown spot in
the middle of his forehead whence where, since
childhood, he had knelt down and put his
forehead on the floor to pray. During our thirteen
days of private sessions, we often worried we
would not succeed. Sadat asked us to remember
that all of us were children of Abraham, bound
together by much more than what divided us. He
said this repeatedly in the process, making Prime
Minister Begin a little nervous, but his attitude
impressed me very much. Anwar Sadar and Jimmy Carter at Camp David

On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, all three
faiths used the same little room for worship.
We had to change it multiple times every
week, so the Muslims, and then the Jews,
and then the Christians could worship. Today,
a Chapel has been built at Camp David for
that purpose. Sadat wanted to build a
common meeting place on Mount Sinai, and
had he not been assassinated a few months
after I left the White House, I think his plans
would have borne fruit. Sadat always made it
plain that Muslim believers revered Moses
and Jesus Christ, and that Christians and
Jews were accepted in in the Muslim faith as
children of the book.” Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin at Camp David

Menachem Begin & Jimmy Carter & wives
Day 272. “During thirteen difficult days, Prime
Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, President
Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and I worked at Camp David
to negotiate a historic peace agreement. When we
returned to Washington, I was invited to address a
special session of the US Congress.
I had no time to develop a lengthy speech, but I
decided on the way to the Capitol to quote
Matthew 5:9. I wanted to say, Blessed are the
peacemakers, but I couldn’t remember what came
next, so I asked to be given a Bible upon my arrival.
A staff member slipped me a piece of paper that
said, For they will be called children of God. I
repeated it as I asked Sadat and Begin to stand.”

Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin sign Camp David Accords, 1978
“Peacemakers are very special
people; you have to
understand and sympathize
with others who have different
points of view. Begin and
Sadat’s countries had been at
war for four times during the
previous twenty-five years.
They hated each other. I kept
the two men apart for their
last ten days at Camp David
because they couldn’t sit in
the same room without all the
old animosities coming out.”

Day 308. “Yitzhak Rabin, a former
Prime Minister of Israel, was
assassinated in 1995. He had been
a friend of mine for twenty-four
years. When I was elected
Governor, General Rabin visited
Rosalyn and me in Georgia. He was
the hero of the Six-Day war in 1967,
in which Israel repelled attackers
and occupied the Holy Land.
The year after Rabin’s visit to Georgia, Rosalyn and I visited Israel as Rabin’s guest.
Our first time there, Rabin arranged in-depth briefings for me with Israel's top
generals and military leaders, so I could learn about the Mideast war environment.
Which began my intense interest in the Middle East.”

Sometime later, Rabin and
other Israeli leaders held
separate secret talks with
Palestinians, which resulted in
the Oslo agreement,” in which
“the Israelis publicly agreed to
withdraw from certain
Palestinian territory, despite
the convictions of some right-
wing Israelis. When someone
decided to kill the traitor
Rabin, the young assassin said,
‘God wanted me to do it.’
Rabin speaking at 1995 rally, shortly before his assassination

“We humans can build up within
ourselves a strong element of
hatred, even to the point of murder,
when we feel deeply about
something. It’s easy to say, ‘I’m
speaking for God, and anyone who
disagrees with me opposes God.’
This attitude can easily lead to
horrible violence and conflict, so we
must take care not to spiritualize our
personal beliefs simply because we
feel strongly about some issue.”

Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter, 1979
Day 10. “In 1978, Deng Xiaoping, Vice
Premier of China, and I began months
of intense secret negotiations. Finally in
December, we announced
normalization of diplomatic relations
between China and the United States.
The next month I invited the Chinese
leader to visit Washington. He asked if I
had any special favor to ask. I asked
him to give people religious freedom
and allow Bibles and missionaries to
return to China. He pledged to do
these things, except that no foreign
missionaries could return.

St Joseph Cathedral in Tianjin, China
A couple of years later, on a visit to
China, I found churches overrun with
worshippers in Shanghai. They held four
services a day to accommodate all the
new believers. They had run out of
special paper for printing bibles which
the government provided.
Thirty years of intense persecution under
the communist regime had forced
Christians to consolidate, and their faith
became more intense. When they finally
received a breath of fresh air, the
Christian faith exploded, and still today it
continues to grow by leaps and bounds.”

Day 57. “During my presidency, Idi Amin
was the leader of Uganda and the most
brutal dictator I had ever known. He lied
and killed his way to power and then
executed tens of thousands of his own
people to stay there. We later saw
vultures called Marabou storks hanging
around a prominent hotel in the capital
city. Why? Amin often killed his
opponents and had their bodies thrown
from the hotel’s balcony, and the birds
ate their corpses.

I mean Idi Amin hated me because I had a strong
policy of human rights, and I condemned him publicly.
One time, to embarrass me, he rounded up fifty-one
Christian missionaries and announced to the world
that he would execute them. I didn’t know what to do.
Finally, I talked with some Muslim friends in Saudi
Arabia who called Amin and threatened to cut off
foreign aid in an effort to convince him to let the
missionaries go.
Amin relented and told the missionaries they could go
free, but every one of them refused to leave their
service for Jesus Christ in Uganda. When I received
word of their decision, I went off by myself and wept.”
1977 caricature of Amin by Edmund Valtman

Some passages say that if diplomats visit your country, treat them with absolute
courtesy, but yet the fundamentalist Iranian leader violated these principles by
holding our hostages for fourteen months! I thank God that eventually they all
returned home, safe and free, but through that experience I learned an unwelcome
lesson on fundamentalism.”
Day 224. “When Iran took
American hostages in
November 1979, the affliction
of Islamic fundamentalism hit
me as President. One of the
basic principles of the Koran is
that visitors are to be treated
with the utmost respect.

Day 314. “St Thomas Aquinas, who
lived in the 13th century,” pondered
the question, “’What is a just war?’
Aquinas struggled with the verse
about turning the other cheek. The
definition of a just war that he
developed, which has greatly
influenced Christians ever since,
insists that war should be a last
resort after all peaceful alternatives
have been exhausted.
St Thomas Aquinas, by Luis Muñoz Lafuente, 1795

I faced this issue as President on several
occasions. One example was when the Iranian
militants captured and held some American
hostages. I prayed more during that year than at
any other time. We could have destroyed Iran
with our powerful military, but in the process
many innocent Iranians would have been killed.
There is little doubt that our hostages would have
been assassinated by their captors in retaliation
against our attacks, so I decided, contrary to most
of the advice I received, to try to resolve the issue
peacefully, through economic pressure and
persistent negotiations.
Barry Rosen, embassy press attaché, was a hostage.

I never went to bed during the
last three days of my
presidency, working nonstop for
the release of the hostages. At
10 AM, on my last day of office,
they were released to board an
airplane, but Ayatollah
Khomeini wouldn’t let the plane
depart until I was no longer
President. Five minutes after
noon, the plane took off, and all
the hostages came home safe
and to freedom.”
VP George HW Bush and others welcome hostages home.

Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity
Day 160. “Habitat for Humanity workers were
excluded from India until I signed an official
declaration to the Prime Minister that they
would not promote Christianity. It’s also
against the law in Greece to convert an
Orthodox believer to Protestantism. When I
was President, I had a serious problem
because one of our mercy ships docked in
Greece. An officer gave some Protestant
pamphlets to a teenager who came on board.
His mother learned about it and told the
authorities, and they arrested and imprisoned
the officer. Fortunately, I was able to use my
Presidential influence to get him released, but
it was a surprising thing to see happen.”

Day 105. “Roslyn and I have visited
Saudi Arabia several times. On one
occasion, we” “visited King Fahd in
the desert. From our helicopter, we
looked down upon many Bedouin
camps. Although Saudi Arabia is a
wealthy country, most Bedouins still
live in their goat hair tents just as
their ancestors did. Nowadays, you
might see a British Land Rover next to
the tent and a satellite antenna so the
family can watch Al Jazeera, CNN, or
cartoons.”
Bedouin family in Wahiba Sands, Oman

Carter is referring to the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and the Old
Testament stories about how the patriarchs often met their spouses at watering
holes, where their sheep and camels drink water from the well.
“When different flocks
come to a central water
hole the sheep all mixed
together. When the
shepherds move their
flocks, they stand aside,
whistle, and their sheep
come to them. An
intimate relationship
exists between sheep
and their shepherd.”
Rebecca and Eliézer at the well, by Alexandre Cabanel, 1883

President Jimmy Carter on Domestic Affairs

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER ON DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
Jimmy Carter also faced many challenges
domestically. The country was coming out of a deep
recession with persistent stagflation and energy
supply issues.

Old Picture of Sing Sing Prison
Day 213. “The poor are often assigned
court lawyers for trial. This happened
to Mary Prince, who has helped my
family ever since my days as governor.
One day, when she took a short trip to
see her aunt, a shooting occurred. As
Mary was the only stranger in town,
she was arrested for the crime,
although she had nothing to do with it.
On the day of her trial, her court-
appointed attorney met her for the
first time and said, ‘Mary, just plead
guilty and we’ll get you a minimum
punishment.’ She did so and received a
life sentence.

When I became
President, the original
trial judge agreed to
look into Mary’s case.
Soon she was found
completely innocent,
but by then she had
served six years in
prison. After receiving
a full pardon, she was
released.”
Watch tower at Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, California.

Day 218. “Business leaders in the third world nations
rarely have enough money to bribe outsiders, so most
such bribes come only from the world's rich nations. I
saw this clearly during my presidency. During my early
months in office, we passed a law called the Foreign
Corrupt Practices act, making it a serious crime for any
American business to bribe a foreigner in order to make
a sale or gain an advantage. Many objected to the act,
even good friends thought they would be at a severe
disadvantage if they couldn’t offer bribes. In fact, after
the act passed, Delta Airlines had to cancel all its flights
to Mexico and Jamaica, partially because airport
officials there wouldn’t service its planes unless the
airline bribed them.”

St Augustine and Monica, Time Magazine
Day 340. “One day my press
secretary Jody Powell said to my
mother Lillian, ‘A very important
reporter from the Washington
Post wants to interview you,
she’s going to write a very good
article about you.’” She was
reluctant but finally agreed.
“The reporter began asking
some not so friendly questions.”
She asked whether her son “was
always truthful. Mama said,
‘That’s right, even when Jimmy
was a small boy.’ “
Jimmy Carter and Lillian Carter, 1977

“The reporter asked, ‘You mean
he has never lied?’ His mother
Lillian replied, ‘No, except maybe
a little white lie now and then.’
‘Aha,’ the reporter exclaimed, ‘a
white lie! What do you mean by
that?’
Mama replied, ‘Remember, when
you came to the door a while
ago, and I said, you look very
nice and was glad to see you?’”

Jimmy Carter After His Presidency
Ex-President Jimmy Carter aboard USS Jimmy Carter / Jimmy Carter as Sunday School Teacher

JIMMY CARTER AFTER HIS PRESIDENCY
Jimmy Carter was in his late fifties after his
Presidency, but he did not want to retire. He
continued informal diplomacy, continued his
involvement in Habitat for Humanity, providing
housing for the poor, and founded the non-profit
Carter Center.

Day 241. “After the tragic attacks on
September 11, 2001, authorities
arrested about sixteen-hundred
people living in America, mostly of
Arab descent, suspecting that they
might be guilty of terrorist
activities. They were imprisoned for
months without being charged,
with access to lawyers or even their
families.

“Some of their loved ones made calls to human
rights organizations, including the Carter
center, saying, ‘I don’t know how to contact my
husband. He was taken away and is being held
incommunicado.’ Many others were captive in
different parts of the world or were locked in
wire cages at Guantanamo Bay. Some of them
still remain without being tried and proven
guilty. The Secretary of Defense announced the
Geneva principles regarding treatment of
prisoners did not apply to anyone suspected of
terrorist activities.”
Collapse of the towers, view from New Jersey

Day 264. “In just a few days of genocide in
Rwanda during 1994, more than half a million
people died. Roslyn and I later visited a killing
site, a small church with a few outbuildings.
Tutsi women and children had crowded into
this church while their husbands fled into the
swamps and woods. The men imagined that
their families would be safe in the church, but
the Hutus killed all of them with axes, spears,
and machetes. Today, visitors see big piles of
skulls inside the building, and outside there
were layers of rotting clothes, human hair,
and bones in a deep hole where several
hundred bodies were dumped.
Rwandan Genocide Memorial, Geneva

“Only one woman survived. She came to
the church with the baby in her arms and
one on her back. They killed her two
infants, slashed her neck, and buried her
under a pile of corpses. Periodically, the
killers returned to examine the bodies,
checking to see if any remained alive. She
lay still. I spoke with her at length and
asked her if she knew who ordered the
massacre. She said she did, it was her
neighbors who gave the orders,
neighbors she had known all her life.”
Genocide victims, Genocide Memorial Center in Kigali

Bible scholars say the
human race is fallen. In
practical terms, that
means we all have a
staggering capacity for
evil. Biblical history
reports that things got
so bad that God wiped
out the whole race and
started over with Noah
and his family.”
Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, by Simon de Myle, 1570

Day 119. “My sister Ruth Carter
Stapleton believed in the ceremony
described by James” where sick
people were anointed by oil “because
it brought people together in a spirit
of humility. She asked” when she was
deathly ill for “her friends to pray not
that she would recover from her fatal
disease, but that she’d be strong
enough to accept the will of God. She
wanted to embrace God’s will with
joy and not as a tragedy.”

Day 129. “Garth Brooks is a
friend and a dedicated Habitat
for Humanity volunteer. One of
his greatest hits is Unanswered
Prayers, which describes his
gratitude when he meets a
former sweetheart who chose
someone else many years after
he had married his second
choice. He thanks God that the
Lord denied his earlier prayer.
Garth says happiness isn’t about
getting what you want, it’s
about wanting what you’ve got.”

Day 284. “Roslyn and I took up skiing
at an advanced age. Our friend, Prince
Bandar, the Saudi Arabian ambassador
to Washington, let us use his ski lodge
overlooking Aspen’s beautiful slopes.
We took our grandchildren, and
Bandar’s place amazed them! It had
an indoor swimming pool, many
servants, wonderful food, and a game
room for the kids. One morning at
breakfast, one of my grandchildren,
Jeremy, a particularly outspoken child,
said in a loud piping voice, ‘Papa, are
you going to die someday?’
Downtown Aspen, 2005

My heart pounded with pleasure
as I thought, Here’s my little
grandson worried about his
papa’s health. I replied, ‘Well
yes, sweet boy, everybody’s
going to die someday, but I hope
it won’t be anytime soon.’
Deathly silence followed, and I
couldn’t wait to hear Jeremy’s
response. Finally, he asked,
‘Papa, when you die, can we still
come to Bandar’s place?’”

Day 329. “In 1981, I was asked to
make a small speech at a small
Methodist College in southern Japan.
I had been out of the White House
only a few months and they had felt
over-awed that a former President
would even visit their school.
Everyone was nervous: the professors,
the administrators, the students, and
the parents, so I decided to begin my
speech with a joke.”

“It takes a long time to translate English into
Japanese, and the Japanese sense of humor
differs markedly from ours, so instead of my
funniest joke, I chose my shortest one. After the
interpreter translated it, the whole audience
collapsed into laughter. I had never had a better
response to a joke, and I couldn’t wait to finish
my speech so I could ask the interpreter how he
translated it.
When I later inquired, however, the man ducked
his head looked the other way and changed the
subject. When I persisted, he finally said, ‘Mr
President, I told the audience President Carter
told the funny story. Everyone must laugh.’”

Day 343. “For thirty years, I’ve been a
professor at Emory University, which has a
very fine religion and theology school. The
university has been careful to assure that
professors who teach in the theology school
are not all cut from the same cloth. No one
has to sign a creed that says, ‘I will teach this
way and no other.’ In the past, our seminaries
customarily let people and pastors express
their own ideas, as long as they believed in
the fundamentals of the Christian faith. It’s
becoming less prevalent today: one major
Baptist seminary recently fired every
professor who believed that women might be
pastors deacons or even teachers.

I believe these kinds of
changes conflict with the
idea of the priesthood of
all believers. Each of us
has a sobering
responsibility to study the
scriptures and come to
our own conclusions,
through prayer and
meditation about God’s
mandates. This is religious
freedom.”
George W Bush invited former George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy
Carter, & President-elect Barack to The White House on January 7, 2009

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quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
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