November 9

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."~John 16:33

As my American readers know, November 8 is Election Day, and the buildup to that day has been incredibly pretentious, especially in the race for the presidency. Each of the two major parties have a candidate that is hated by everyone in the other party, and even some people from their own. Many people have made the decision to vote for their party's candidate not because they want them in the White House, but because they don't want the other party's nominee in there. There are also many choosing to vote for a third party candidate as an act of protest against their party, even though our nation's two-party system renders any third party candidate not viable. Social media has fueled this mutual hatred and release of venom by making it incredibly easy for even the most seemingly insignificant person to make their voice heard.

While I don't know who the President-Elect will be on November 9, I do know who will really be in control of this great nation, and that is Jesus Christ. Nothing any of us can ever do will change this. He was there when this nation was founded, and He will be here until the very end. Some may wonder how this can be with our only options being deeply flawed candidates, but I believe that God can use people that no one would expect to further his kingdom. 

The Bible has many examples of this, with the most prominent being King David. He is the only person in the Bible to be called "a man after God's own heart," yet his resume is not one that would suggest him as such. He once stayed home instead of leading his troops into battle, watched a young woman bathing, and then committed adultery with this woman. When he discovered she was pregnant, he arranged for her husband to return home to sleep with her, and when the husband refused, King David arranged for him to be killed and took the woman as his wife. Faced with a candidate with that past, most of us would not want to elect him, yet he is revered to this day as one of ancient Israel's greatest kings, and was important enough that the Savior of the world came through his lineage.

King David is not the only black spot in the lineage of Jesus. There's Jacob, who used trickery to rob his older brother Esau of both his birthright and his blessing; Judah, who fathered twins with his daughter-in-law Tamar; Rahab, a former prostitute; and Rehoboam, David's grandson, who aided in the destruction of his kingdom by listening to his own stupid friends rather than his father's trusted advisors. Yet all of these people were a part of the family of Jesus.

There were others important in the story of the Bible who were just as bad, and in some cases worse. Moses was a murderer who had to flee for his life from Egypt years before God called him to lead the Israelites out of there. Peter was a hothead who chopped off a servant's ear during Jesus' arrest, and later that night, denied three times that he was ever a follower. Before Paul brought the Gospel of Christ to the Gentiles, he went around persecuting Christians, including watching the coats of the men who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr. If all of these imperfect people could be a part of God's plan to redeem humanity, than He can use an imperfect candidate to bring America out of the dark season we find ourselves in. We just have to trust Him and never stop praying for our leaders and our nation.