Whirlwind? Tsunami? Hurricane? Tornado? I’m struggling to find the best word to describe the sheer volume of President Trump’s daily pronouncements/announcements. I even did a quick ‘google search’ to find a suitable synonym. I steered clear of ‘twister’ of course and finally decided to use ‘Trumpet blasts’.

I find it difficult to keep up with all that ‘Discursive Donald’ says, but I do try my best because I believe we need to know what the President of the United States is thinking. Having said that, I am not sure where he’s at in his spat with the BBC over the editing of the speech he made in January 2021. As we know the BBC has apologised that it gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show it again.

But what about the threat of legal action? Things seem to have gone strangely quiet on that front. At least, for now.

The more I ponder this unfortunate incident the more I am reminded of two Greek words that are used in the New Testament and seem to sum up the essence of the Christian faith. The first is ‘hamartia’ and is usually translated as ‘sin’.

Essentially it means ‘to miss the mark’ as I famously did when I was playing golf. The ball landed on the eighteenth green even though I was on the first hole!

We all miss the mark, and not just in golf! We can do so inadvertently, and we can also do it deliberately which is why it was good to read that the BBC has apologised to the President. Christians can identify with that because saying ‘sorry’ both to God and to other people is a basic tenet of the faith.

The other word is ‘charis’, and it conveys the ideas of ‘gift’ and ‘grace’. It’s the word that describes God’s attitude towards us and is summed up beautifully in the belief that Jesus ‘paid the price’ for our sins. But, and it’s a very important but, Christians are also aware that they are called to follow His example and so live the way He did.

As I’ve said in a previous column Canon Andrew Fausset clearly understood this. He was an Irish landlord during one of the severe potato famines that devastated ‘The Emerald Isle’ in the mid nineteenth century. Things got so bad that a number of families pleaded with him to release them from their debts because they had no money. Fausset wrote back and said that he couldn’t possibly do that that but amazingly, he gave them a cheque that covered far more than they owed him.

That was an astonishing example of grace, and it made me wonder that if Mr Trump would do the same if he were to be awarded compensation. Having said that, Canon Fausset’s gracious behaviour should challenge every one of us – in all sorts of ways.