I'm already sick to death of The Election...

So the Iowa caucuses are meeting tonight, and I am sick to death of hearing about the pretentious Trump and the sprawling remainder of the Republican field; Hillary, the denying deceiver; Bernie, the inane. I’m also unutterably tired of the constant extrapolation of a relatively small number of facts that the press delivers. Redundancy and repetition abound.

It seems that politics is currently the country’s favorite sport.

And it IS a sport. Strategies for victory that include subterfuge, aggressive confrontational action, misdirection, secrecy, claiming or re-claiming territory, personal attacks, strong defense against untruths and misinterpreted communications.

It seems that no one has the issues correctly identified, or the solutions reasonably expressed and understood. And with that I feel a kind of despair that anything will ever be changed. The blather will continue, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, while the people of this country lose hope, and the freedom to make their lives as good as they can be.

Assaults on every side, and we have a bunch of candidates trying to make their approval percentage jump because they have some zingers to deliver against their opponents.

Yeesh. I’m thinking my despair is justified, and my intent to turn away from the noise and do nothing, entirely reasonable, if not an act of survival.

But then I remember reading this as I plodded my way through G. K. Chesterton’s very logical book, Orthodoxy: “…I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.”He speaks of suicide as “the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take an oath of loyalty to life.”

I can’t help but think of my apathy and despair in the same light. If I believe that God is the omnipotent Creator, full of love and care for His creation, there is no greater disrespect than my pessimistic certainty that all is lost. I am choosing to look away, to disengage and doubt what my God can do, when I should be waiting expectantly for redemption and hoping for revival.

Another great writer, Oswald Chambers, reminds me: “Our Lord trusted no man, yet He was never suspicious, never bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God and in what His grace could do for any man, was so perfect that He despaired of no one.”

I despair of men and women on this earth, and many are unworthy of trust, but I must not forget what God’s grace can do for any one – ANY one! I need to live in hope by engaging with the fray as best I can, from my small platform, which, in this case, mostly means praying, and praying fervently…God is GOD…He is capable of things beyond my understanding. I should be asking Him about that.

Many of us who call ourselves Christians are convinced that there have never been times as bad as these. The moral fabric of our nation seems to be torn beyond mending, soon to be rent and destroyed. I don’t believe we are that far gone. Indeed, we are heading toward the loss (some already experienced) of values we hold dear, but we have no idea how unique in this world, and how extravagant, are the freedoms we enjoy. We have little understanding of how dark and dangerous previous ages have been by comparison. There is much good that our country can and will do in the world in the ages ahead. We are not finished yet with freedom, but we need to protect it at each small erosion so it will not be swept away.

We can do this – if we despair of no one, and trust God.