OUR POLITICS

October 31, 2004

Both President Bush and President Clinton called our home this week. (Not really, they were both recordings.) If you live in a contested state you probably have had the same experience. We voted early. We still had to wait an hour to get a ballot. We'd done our homework so the actual voting went rather quickly.

Eventually someone will occupy the White House. As difficult as this had been on all of us, it's nothing like the old days. Is didn't take long for Jesus to run afoul of the politics of his time, for example. The powers that be were fearful of his power and felt desperate to stop him. (They couldn't, of course, but that's another story-the Gospel story.)

In the end his death was announced in three languages, Hebrew, Latin and Greek, I believe. "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," the sign said. That wasn't the end of the story. It wasn't even a political story, even though at the time that's the way it was understood.

In our system, we won't take the life of the losing candidate. No coup here. No assassination of the family. We have God and the founders of our country to thank for that.

In the end it's God's will-whoever gets elected. Let's thank God for that, too.