The Path Forward - Post Election

After this election I find myself hungry for humility, gentleness, kindness and goodness.  We have been inundated through the news and social media with arrogance, accusations, insults and anger, not just between the candidates, but often between family, friends and neighbors.

Some are characterizing November 8 as a day of election depression.  We are just tired of it, and wanting to leave it behind us for four more years.  Our way forward is not more of the same.  It is a different course. 

Jesus identified the path that leads a people and a nation to health and wholeness.  He did so with his story of a man who finds a helpless stranger.  Even though he is of a different ethnicity, culture and religion than his own, he washes the stranger’s wounds and pays for his care.  He did so when he described a father who refused to give up on his wayward boy, even though his son had wasted a good part of the family fortune. He did so by the way he treated a woman caught in adultery, challenging anyone without sin to cast the first stone.  He did so in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, offering to give her living water.

In these and in many other ways, Jesus demonstrated the way forward.

We must be kind to one another, in our families, in our schools and in the work place. The way forward is found in thoughtful words and actions. We must respect those of every color and culture. We must speak words of encouragement to those who wait on our tables, to cashiers in the check-out line, to beggars on the street and to the officers who pulls us over. We must be kind to one another, forgiving every slight and confessing every wrong.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way you will be acting as true sons of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust too.  If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even scoundrels do that much.  If you are friendly only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even the heathen do that.  But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48. Living Bible).