The Day After

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

The Day After, wasn’t that the name of a catastrophe movie about a nuclear holocaust or something? I’m sure for many, that is how they feel this morning–like a bomb has gone off. Fear, anxiety, hopelessness.

This has been one of the most difficult elections in my lifetime and in the end I could not bring myself to vote for either presidential candidate. I know this confession is not going to endear me to anyone reading this but felt it important to share nonetheless. My hope is that in knowing this every reader would be enabled to hear what I would like to share.

I have been very blessed to have friends of many ideologies and political persuasions–all of them good people. And I know first hand that their reasons for voting for either candidate don’t fit the stereotypical negative assumptions/accusations that are flying around.

My heart is very heavy. As I read through today’s posts on social media, the discourtesy, animosity, racial division and even hatred is very disconcerting.

I felt directed to read 1 Corinthians 13 for some encouragement and guidance for the days ahead. The following is from Eugene Peterson’s The Message.

4 Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
5 Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
6 Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
7 Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Governments are always changing. Politicians come and go, but

8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. 9 We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

 The truth is–none of us knows where we are going as a Nation.

12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

To me this helped put everything into perspective. As it says, we have three things to do. Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly and love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love! LH

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is an aspiring Bounty Hunter who is always looking for God's Bounty-- His grace and goodness-- in the mundane and melancholy as well as in the miraculous. She is also a wife, mother of four adult children--two with Cerebral Palsy, grandmother and minister of the Gospel. "You crown the year with a bountiful harvest; even the hard pathways overflow with abundance." Psalm 65:11 NLT

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