I am writing this blog a few days before Election Day in the US. That’s actually not entirely true, because Election Day started weeks ago as early voting was allowed in many places and tens of millions of ballots have already been cast. It is therefore possible that the election has already been decided, however, we won’t know for sure for a few more days at least.
But no matter who emerges victorious from this electoral contest (I am intentionally not using the phrase “whoever wins” here) it is indisputable that America has already seen drastic changes in recent years and both the pace and intensity of change will almost certainly continue to escalate. The America I was blessed to grow up in is long gone, and it’s never coming back. What has replaced it is better in some ways and catastrophically worse in many other ways. What’s coming next is difficult to know, but whatever it is, there’s little doubt that it will be very different, probably also in good and bad ways, than what we have now.
Most people know all this on some level, and its causing an enormous amount of fear and anxiety. There was even an Editorial in the Jerusalem Post this last week entitled “The United States of Anxiety” which gave an excellent overview of all the things that Jewish Americans are expressing fears about in these days.
Once many years ago I read a book in which the author said that “we rarely see either our fondest hopes or our greatest fears come to fruition.”
I have lived less than half a century, and what I’ve seen has led me to believe that this is largely true, at least most of the time. But occasionally we DO see our fondest hopes come to fruition, and occasionally we DO see our greatest fears come to fruition.
However, the common thread through all of these events and experiences, the good, the bad, the glorious and the horrible, is a God who is faithful and true and whose Word never returns void, whose love and mercy never fail.
The Bible contains 365 passages that tell us not to be afraid. Some of those passages were addressed specifically to people living in times of great persecution against Believers as well as political, economic, societal and cultural upheaval very similar to what we’re living through right now, or even worse.
1 Corinthians 16:13-14 says; “Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. All that you do must be done in love.”
These are important words to remember as we move forward into whatever it is that’s coming next.
May God give us all the courage, strength, clarity and hope we’ll need to do all He has called us to do in this most difficult and uncertain season of history we’re currently living through.