A reminder or 2 to people of faith on
Election Day. God is still God, and will be tomorrow. Political ideology is our
idolatry - on both sides! and both are fake gods that can't deliver. Elections
and policies matter, but Church does not equal country, never has, never will.
The Church's work does not change today.
The most important day in history isn't
today; it was Good Friday, which N.T. Wright calls
The Day the Revolution Began. Our task is God's agenda, which
sometimes looks conservative, sometimes liberal, always carried out in
humility, compassion and determination.
Pray: not for your guy to win, since that
won't usher in the kingdom of God, and if your guy loses, God is still God and
the Church has loads of work to do. Pray for your soul, for the soul of the
nation, for the world, and for the Church to be the Church. Ephesians 5:1 says
"Be imitators of God," the God who has grieved throughout history
over far worse than we're dealing with. How do we imitate God?
Thomas à Kempis, on the heels of a pandemic
that killed one-third of Europe, and during brutal political wars in the 15th
century, wrote The Imitation of Christ,
which includes this: "Lord in what can I trust in this life? And what is
my greatest comfort on earth? Is it not yourself, O Lord my God, whose mercy is
limitless? Have I ever prospered without you? Did I ever suffer ill when you
were at hand? I would rather be poor for your sake than rich without you. I
would choose to be a wanderer on earth with you than to possess heaven without
you. For where you are, there is heaven; where you are not, there is hell. You
are my sole desire. For you I sigh, pray and cry. I cannot put my trust in any
mortal to afford me help sufficient for my needs, but in you alone, O my God.
You are my hope, my trust, my strength, most faithful in all things.”
