Many have analyzed Jimmy Carter’s presidency and will continue to do so, as the nation mourns his death today, and reflects on the life of  this good and decent man. In 2015, New York Times Columnist, Nicholas Kristof, offered an apology on behalf of the media to former President Jimmy Carter. Carter served during a time of rapid inflation, brought on by the Iranian Revolution and its control of oil. World oil production was cut back leading to shortages, long lines at gas stations and high prices. The media of the 1970’s didn’t take to Carter. His Southern background wasn’t a mix for Washington insiders. Jokes about peanuts were frequent. His presidency was covered by the media in a way that indicated that the Georgia peanut farmer, belonged back home on the farm. Life for Carter after the presidency though, was an amazing story of living life with significance and meaning. Nicholas Kristof ended his July 9, 2015 apology to Jimmy Carter saying, “We in the snooty media world owe him an apology.” He pointed out that this former president improved the lives of more people, in more places in the world than any other recent president. From the time I first heard that former President Jimmy Carter led a Bible Study at his home church in Plains Georgia, it was on my bucket list of things to do. Which is how I found myself in that little church on a Sunday morning in June of 2012. Then, age 87, the former president was just back from monitoring the election in Egypt. Jimmy Carter exuded joy when he shared his deep faith. The day I visited his Bible Study, Carter was focusing on the portion of Matthew, we know of as the Lord’s Prayer. Carter said he believed that when Jesus told his disciples to pray the words.  “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven”(Matthew 6:10). Jesus was asking them and us to envision the world God wants for us. “It certainly,” he said, “would be one of peace.” Then he told us what he had come to believe, that “Peace cannot come apart from forgiveness.” Carter said that the years of his presidency were those when he prayed most fervently with the most emotion because he felt an obligation to the American people not to make a mistake. I’ve always admired the way he chose to live after he left the White House. Instead of sitting back and resting on some quite significant accomplishments in life, he decided to take that segment of life left to him, and do whatever he could to make the world a better place. He created the Carter Center with it’s mission to “Wage peace, fight disease, and build hope.” He was frequently invited to monitor elections around the world, to insure the integrity of those elections. He left us the day I visited with these words, “Our prayer should be to find out where we fit into the universe.” I think that last piece is one that is a lifetime quest. Where does God want us to fit into the universe? How does God want us to serve in this stage of each of our lives? Jimmy Carter found his way and he blessed all of us in it. *A version of this post was published previously, on July 31, 2015 as “An Apology for a Former President”