The Risk of Living Too Close to Elections
Just stop a minute.
Just stop a minute and ask yourself if you are worried about who will win the next election.
I’m not saying it isn’t important.
I think it is.
But I also think that it falls into the category of what you will eat and drink.
Jesus put it this way.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Matthew 6:25 (ESV)
At some level we are all involved with eating and drinking. It is not a completely passive activity. But the point Jesus is making is we do not control all of it. In fact every bite we take is, or at least should be, a good reminder of how finite and needy we actually are. We do not generate within us our own food and beverages. We are dependent on the world God supplies — and he has promised to be with us through this world into the next.
God manages kings, presidents, dictators, and every bureaucrat in ways similar to how he works in our own lives. To the extent we have influence with others, including politicians, we should use it. This includes praying for their protection because the political process works best when it and the people within it are not under attack.
Also we can pray for God’s kingdom, his righteousness, to come into our own and influence it.
We need peace.
This means strength and security should surround us.
We need freedom to speak honestly and to gather for worship without fear.
We need a healthy and honest economic system, not one that removes wealth in redistribution plans intended to primarily strengthen the wealth and power of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
We need systems that do not abuse the poor and helpless. Let’s clearly understand that open borders harm everyone, especially those trafficked with promises and threats to cross into other countries illegally. Migrants and the poor are not our enemies.
We need to be able to think clearly. This requires an education process that begins in the home. We need children to trust their parents — and by parents — I mean adults in their lives who assume the responsibility to appropriately care for them. We do not need them to be told to trust outside systems established by government more than their own families.
We need the gaslighting to end.
This means those obvious truths should not be used to destabilize us.
There is nothing supreme about being white, black, or any other pigmentation.
There are only male and female and it is impossible to change from one into the other. What you can do is take drugs and have mutilating surgeries because some in authority tell you lies.
Part of this gaslighting, which intensifies just before elections with its best purveyors being pollsters and celebrity newscasters constantly broadcasting every little hiccup through an enormous well-funded megaphone, is to tell us we should be worried, that we can lose it all.
The truth of the matter is that we are more secure than we can imagine when we find our strength in God. He is where courage comes from. We simply need to ask for it and he will supply.
If you want to help people the most this politically charged season, then live a calm, peaceful life of trust that they can watch.
If you are becoming anxious, turn off the news. Watching and reading it obsessively will not change the course of God’s plans.
Instead, read other material that will remind you that there is nothing new under the sun and that we will get through this.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
One of my very favorite passages. You covered a lot of topics. But this was calming and very well said.