I won’t tell you who I voted for, but I voted. I felt moved as I walked out of my polling station here in Long Beach. This afternoon I flew standby on a flight from Denver into Burbank and then walked over as the sun was setting to the Burbank Elementary School a block away to punch the ballot. Walking away from the booth I felt very proud… not to be an American, but to be free. I know it can seem cliche as an American to say that, but at the end of today, no matter who is President (it’s Obama), I live in a country where I’m free and blessed to be so.
I walked down a mostly culturally-mixed street, turned right and walked onto the property of a mostly non-white elementary school, and then followed the fluttering paper signs taped to a chain-link fence, between two dumpsters, and into a dingy, dimly-lit school auditorium to cast my vote in a wide-open little kiosk. I felt like i was voting in Botswana. And I loved it. I was a minority voting alongside diverse Americans. It was enough to make this generally-unoptimistic-unpatriotic-freedom-loving-American smile as I walked back from the polls.
Katie
As written by Pastor Al Mohler…
“I am thankful that as we stand here today, we come in the name of the one true and living God who is the electing God and not the elected God. We are here in the name of a sovereign, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. His name is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We are here in the name of the triune God who reigns over all things. We are here in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ our Redeemer. We are here in the name of One who reigns over the affairs of nations, who looks down upon the affairs of men and sees grasshoppers, insects in debate, insects in decision, hopping bugs with the weighty affairs of state [Isaiah 40:22].
Scripture says that the Lord God shows his sovereignty in the rising and in the falling of nations, in the waxing and in the waning of empires. With biblical discernment, our task is to look to the affairs of the world and see the action of God, the judgment and the mercy of God outpoured as God’s sovereign and perfect will will dictate and as God’s humble people should observe.
We are people that know politics is important, but not ultimate. We know that politics has its place, an urgent and important place where, in the City of Man, decisions are made that can make the difference between life and death, injustice and justice, mercy and no mercy, commonweal or common disaster. But we also know that there is in this world at its very best only a hint of the kingdom that is to come, where God’s reign is supreme.
No government will ever be able to say, “Every tear has been wiped away.” No government will ever be able to say, “The blind have received sight and the deaf have received hearing and the lame now walk.”…That power is God’s alone”
Nov 05, 2008 @ 10:17 am