We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Election Benediction
On this election day, when so many Americans are experiencing high levels of anxiety, I thought it would be good to share an “Election Benediction” that was written and sent to me by Kenneth Tanner. Let it ground you in the love, peace and security of Christ and his Kingdom.
An Election Benediction
By Kenneth Tanner
May you remember that all politics and all platforms and all legalities and all borders and all leaders are temporary.
May you recall that political movements and boundaries and personalities and programs are here one day and gone the next. All of these are passing away.
May you resist the temptation to place ultimate trust in any person, policy, party, movement, or nation—even a beautiful idea that is embodied by a nation—because there is no nation with an eternal foundation.
May you know that your kingdom is not of this world but of the world that is coming to this world and that is not yet here.
May you in the same breath grasp that engagement with the things of this world—not escape from its harsher, darker realities—is the sacrificial pattern of Jesus Christ.
May you discover your role in the just and merciful governance of the world God made good and pursue that cosmos-converting vocation with love amid the world’s brokenness and grittiness.
May you see your work in the world—all of your callings and activities—as a participation in bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.
May you have strength and beauty and determination and wisdom as you love your neighbor and your enemy as Christ has loved you, seeking with all persons to bring justice, mercy, and lasting peace.
May you comprehend that your salvation is not dependent on who you vote for in an election, or in whether or not you vote; that you are under no biblical or theological or moral obligation to vote for a person or party or proposal or initiative if that vote violates your conscience.
May you be grateful for the opportunity to participate in your government and if you choose not to participate in the election may you find ways to make that non-participation more than a protest, and may you find tangible ways to help and protect the poor and oppressed who might have been helped or shielded by your vote.
May you realize that the kingdom of God is within you and that the Son of God sets you free even as you vote for whomever your conscience dictates, without anxiety or fear, for the Spirit the Father gives us does not make us timid, but bestows on us power, love, and self-discipline.
May your posture toward every human leader be driven by respectful prayer, and where protest and prophecy and non-violent resistance are needed, may you have the courage to speak and oppose and critique in humility and charity.
May you perceive God’s love for creation in sending Jesus to embody a New Humanity, and may you join in Christ’s care for the earth and all its creatures and resources, for we await with patience not only the coming of the Son in the flesh but his perfect bride, a people who beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.
May you trust that Providence is working behind the scenes of history to draw all things to a good and fitting and proper end with justice and mercy.
Amen.
Image credit: Terri Churchill
Category: General
Tags: Faith, Politics, Prayer
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Related Reading
Podcast: Can a Person Come Back to God if They Lose Their Faith?
Greg considers the nature of faith and unbelief and offers some enlightening insight that may surprise you. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0316.mp3
Everybody’s Got A Hungry Heart [Sermon, 7/1/12]
Check out Greg’s latest sermon!
Description from WHC website:
Paul wrote the Colossians to confront a false religion of invoking angels. These invocations were being done because people thought Jesus wasn’t enough. This same type of thought pervades our own society, where people with hungry hearts are searching for more than what Jesus offers. In this sermon, Greg talks about the fullness that Jesus brings.
Why Does God Need Prayer?
Greg Loves Questions. In his best selling book Letters from a Skeptic, he responds to questions from his father, who was then an atheist. Tomorrow Greg will be hosting a AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. We hope you can join us! Here is an adaptation of one of Greg’s responses to a question from…
You Have What We Call a Theological Problem
Peter Enns posted a blog entitled: Dear Christian: If the Thought of Either Romney or Obama Getting Elected Makes You Fearful, Angry, or Depressed, You Have What we Call a Theological Problem. He makes some pretty good points. What do your emotions around this election tell you about where your hope lies? From the blog: There…
Why Doesn’t God Heal When We Ask?
If we are called to manifest what Jesus manifested and revolt against what Jesus revolted against, and Jesus carried out the kingdom through healing, then why doesn’t God heal those we pray for? One of my personal kingdom heroes is a Vietnamese lady named Dr. Huyen Tranberg. She is a medical doctor who works with…
A Rational Defense of Belief in God
The New York Times recently posted a review of Alvin Plantinga’s book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. In it, Plantinga argues on philosophical grounds that, among other things, theism is not in conflict with science, that a belief in naturalism along with evolution is contradictory, and that “Faith…is another basic way of forming beliefs, distinct…