Election 2016 - There's Still Time To Change Your Mind
This election has been frustrating, disheartening, and downright exhausting, aye friend?
For the last 12 months our thoughts and hearts have been ravaged by an ongoing onslaught of campaign drama, debacle, paranoia and fear. We've been sold a bag of lies: that if our candidate doesn't get into office - the world as we know it, will in fact, end. Our egos are fully on display this go-round. We recite facts to back our positions, post articles from our favorite celeb, use graphs to prove our fears or frustrations, whatever they may be. We demonize the party lines, and anyone and everyone attached to it. Suddenly, people become demons or deity, depending on how we feel that day, and they will sink us or "save us", destroy us or resurrect us. Whatever that means.
The leaders that have have emerged from the fray are a sad and base. We pretend like someone else voted for them. That this is the result of some crazy fringe voters. The tyrants, the people with money, the people with power. The unintelligent, the brainwashed. They did this to us. "These candidates don't represent us," we say.
We believe that this whole charade is someone else's doing, thrust upon us against our will.
But then that's not the truth is it?
To be sure, the state of America is a reflection of our hearts at this moment - in its truest form. (If this is not you forgive me, I'm talking to everyone else as I write.) For the last few years we have whittled down our brothers and sisters to sound-bites. We have allowed disunity to somehow become a value in our households. We have allowed the media to be our highest form of intellect and conscience. We have bowed down to a system, believing it has the ability to direct or guide us, not understanding we have set the system in motion with our own fractured beliefs and half-hearted morality. Our character is not strong, our integrity waining. We are arrogant and all-knowing, depraved and yet not knowing, lacking morality and yet not wanting consequences. We are depraved. Debased. Lost. Captain-less. I have looked in my heart and I have seen this in myself.
And Lord. I am sorry.
Like the Israelites in 1 Samuel asking for a king - we do not understand what we asked for.
These leaders. They are the ones we have called for. They represent us now because THEY ARE US NOW.
She is me. He is me. They are a dire reflection of a nation's hollowed out soul.
But there's still time.
Even if you have cast your vote there's still time for us to change our mind. After all, to "repent" simply means to have a change of heart or a change of mind.
In 1 Samuel God speaks sad and sweet words to Samuel His prophet. In His heartbreak over losing His children to a human leader, he says: "They haven't rejected you Samuel," God spoke softly, "they have rejected Me." I can hear every once of His love and sadness in those words.
I have chosen a king I think in the last few months. My guess is you have too. When I give a news reporter or an article my fullest attention and devotion, I'm choosing a king. When I let my soul be directed by a human being I'm choosing a king. When I let my entire heart be set on things of this world instead of things above I'm choosing a King.
We have chosen a king. But there is still time to change our minds.
This week as you vote bend a knee. If Christ has won your heart once let him win it again. There's still time to turn from our wickedness, humble ourselves, and perhaps the Lord can restore us still. There's still time to do the right thing. Not with a pen and a ballot, but with a rushed returning to a Savior.
Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.