WHERE DO I PUT MY TRUST IN THIS ELECTION?

OK, that’s it.  I am weighing in on this presidential election thing.  It’s gotten out of control.  I just read a post on Facebook in which a person said that anyone who was planning to vote for a particular candidate (I won’t name which one here) should just unfriend him – even if they were family.  Wow.  We need to get a grip on this thing before worry about who sits in the oval office spins us off into whacky.

There’s no better way to do that than to turn to the Word of the One who always has things well in hand.  Almost at the end of the book of Psalms, an unnamed ancient Psalmist wrote something under God’s inspiration that can give us something to hold on to when it seems we’re about to slip over the edge.  Check this out: 

“Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul. 2 I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 3  Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. 4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. 5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. 6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them — he remains faithful forever. 7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, 8 the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. 9 The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. 10 The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations.  Praise the Lord.”  (Psalm 146, New International Translation) 

Now I will assume that if you are reading this you are probably a Christian.  If not, you are evidently interested enough in Christianity to be visiting the website of an overtly and unapologetically Christian church.  So as you read through Psalm 146 again, replace the words Jacob and Zion with the phrase Christian Church.  Now please read it that way again, and linger a bit over verses 5 and 10.

In verses 1 and 2 and the end of verse 10 the Psalmist is challenging us to be less rabid and testy in extolling the virtues and benefits of the presidential candidate we like and rather sing the praises of the Lord.  He gives us good reason for that.  Follow me here:

Human rulers cannot dispense eternal salvation, and one person can’t even bestow national salvation of the earthly geopolitical kind.  They are, after all, just human beings.  Whatever plans they have and whatever promises they make – even if they are able to carry them out – will come to an end when they die or leave office.  That’s not to say that political leaders don’t leave a political legacy that lives for a time; it just means that in the stuff that really matters, such as peace with God and forgiveness of sins and eternal life, they can’t give it or take it away.  To place all one’s hope in someone who’s just passing through the world or through the oval office is just, well, misplaced trust.

Instead, put that trust in the only One who doesn’t die, who with His own Word and Will created the universe and rules it, who can provide us with the daily blessings we need without running it by congress first, who helps us see a hope bigger than the temporal aspirations of a nation, who adopted us into his eternal family through the life and death of His own Son.  We have a pretty awesome military and some really smart people working in the intelligence community, but they have limitations, too.  God doesn’t.  He sees everything and according to his plan and purpose he can frustrate the plans of those who rebel against him.

Best part of this?  He doesn’t stand for election.  There are no term limits for him.  He has always been and will always be.  And as this Psalmist reminds us all, he will always reign for the good of his church – even when we can’t see how that’s happening.  The day after the votes are all counted in this upcoming presidential election, the Lord will still be sitting on the throne of heaven.  He will still be the King of kings.  He will still be forgiving our sins, declaring us righteous for Jesus’ sake, calling us his own, and still keeping all his promises.  That’s the truth that gives the Christian a settled and solid place to stand even in the midst of this presidential campaign.  So don’t panic; put your trust in the God of free and faithful grace.