photo: CCO public domain

It is a beautiful day outside, a beautiful, sunny Fall day! We have had too many of these beautiful days this Fall and Summer. Our part of Alabama is now dry as tinder and we are considered to be in a drought. Having extra heat for an extended time hasn’t helped the situation either. Here it is early November and we are still having many days where the temperature is getting up into the 90’s! Combining that with less water than normal makes for worse drought conditions.

Our nation seems to be in a moral drought

I’ve thought about our country. In many ways, our nation is morally in a drought situation too. We don’t get candidates like the ones we have, that we all dislike so much, who have such high points for dishonesty, by accident.

• Why is it that many of the quality candidates are ridiculed or treated as if they are weird?
• Or false charges are brought against them timed so they can’t prove they are false before crucial votes?
• Or lies are spread by candidates who want power?

Yes, GOD is on the throne and ultimately He is in control of all that is happening in this election…as ugly and tiring as it has been.

But evil has also been very active too. GOD’s purposes will win out whether our personal candidates do or not. He will be glorified in the end. I don’t know how it will happen though.

It’s like reading a good novel. I’m getting to a really interesting part of the book. I want to stay up late at night to see what is going to happen. I’ll probably stay up late to see how this part comes out on Tuesday night!

These signs of moral drought seem to extend to me. I focus on the immediate events happening and get down easily when the things I want to happen don’t go the way I want. But I forget that GOD is on the throne and has a much bigger picture of historic events than I do.

He has an eternal view! As a 70 year old, I can encourage younger people by saying, ” I remember when something similar to this happening in 19xx.” Often they say, “Really, I didn’t know that happened, or that it happened in that context.” And I, or a group of friends from my generation can say, “Yes, it did. It didn’t happen the way you hear it said by people who didn’t live through it.”

Just imagine all the history GOD has seen!

• Imagine all the human mistakes He has watched.
• Think of all the human evil He has observed played out on the weak and powerless.
•  Imagine all the power plays He has watched in action?
• He has watched governments, kingdoms, democracies and empires come and go. None impress Him.

The choice on our vote is possibly a difficult one. Both candidates are severely flawed. But whoever wins, ultimately, King Jesus will be in control of what happens to our nation. 

So, as we face this election where many of us feel our choice is not an easy one in terms of a wonderful pristine candidate to choose, we have to trust GOD to guide us in our vote. What are our other considerations beside the actual candidate? As people, they are both horribly flawed! There is no argument about that.

I am finding myself at this time, more than at any other election (and I’ve never been very idealistic about candidates!) being thrown on GOD’s mercy for our nation and me as an individual…as well as my children and grandchildren!

I keep coming back to the words of II Chronicles 7:14. They have been hounding me. For GOD to change our nation, believers are going to have to come back to GOD in ways we have been unwilling to before now.

As WE turn away from our lukewarmness,
our tolerance of personal sin,
of sin within our own churches…
GOD WILL HEAL OUR LAND! 

We look so much like unbelievers, no one can tell the difference anymore.

If my people who are called by my name
 humble themselves, and pray
and seek my face
and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven
and will forgive their sin
and heal their land.

II Chronicles 7:14

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God,
and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’
you would have asked him,
and he would have given you living water.” 

The woman said to him, “Sir,
you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water? 
Are you greater than our father Jacob?
He gave us the well and drank from it himself,
as did his sons and his livestock.” 

Jesus said to her,
“Everyone who drinks of this water
will be thirsty again, 
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him
will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water,
so that I will not be thirsty
or have to come here to draw water.”

John 4:10-15