The US election is indeed a major crossroads. Two very different individuals vie to lead America. Two very different Administrations would rise, each setting in place officials, diplomats and judges with immense influence. The stakes are high, likely to shape policies, practices and culture far beyond the next four years.
And yet…
When one takes a picture of a tennis ball and gets up very close, the yellow orb can fill the entire photo, as if there were nothing else in the world. Yet when a image is captured of Jupiter, if the photo includes even a modest span of the night sky, that massive planet — many times the size of the earth — becomes a tiny dot set amidst a vast expanse of space and heavenly lights.
It’s all in how much of the frame you give to the subject. The smallest object can fill an entire photo; the largest object, when we zoom out, grows minuscule.
A vital question for American Christians, and others feeling anxious about the election, is this: “How much of my frame – my focus, attention, and thought life – am I giving to the election?”
The simple truth is that my anxiety about any event will largely be a function of how much of my frame it fills. If my frame is largely consumed by politics, little wonder if it creates immense worry. But if I instead see political outcomes as important but ultimately just one small planet set within the vast sky of eternity, then their power over me and my emotional states is dramatically reduced.
In this moment, an invitation from Isaiah 40 rings especially poignant. “Lift up your eyes,” it urges. “Look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.“
In other words, set your frame wide. Take note of kings, princes and presidents. They matter. But place them in the far, far larger context of the wider world, the sweep of history, and – especially – eternity. Most of all, set them beneath the grandeur and goodness of God.
What Isaiah tells us just before urging us to lift our eyes is especially apropos for this moment. There we see that the prophet is not talking merely about “perspective” generally, but specifically about the human penchant to let questions of political power fill our frame. Governing figures and their powers, Isaiah reminds, come and go like desert grass.
“He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than He blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.”
As for a president, so for any ruler before or after. They rise and fall with, in retrospect, shocking brevity. Yes, elections and leaders matter and often carry weighty consequences for nations and the people who fill them. But in the end, that weight is but a feather on the scales of eternity.
So we can turn, with great calm and confidence, to the words that come immediately after God’s invitation to lift up our eyes. It is a gentle rebuke to God’s anxious people of Isaiah’s day, and ours.
“Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, my cause is disregarded by my God? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the end of the earth. He will not grow tired and weary. His understanding no one can fathom.” (Isaiah 40:27-28)
In other words, He’s got this. Whatever happens in the voting, whatever happens in politics and policy, whatever happens in the affairs of princes and kingdoms, God has all of time in His able hands. The road ahead may be very hard, and at times very good, but even the most momentous events are but a little dot in the wide-angle lens of eternity.
Best of all, lest we imagine otherwise, this is not only true only in a vast, far-off, someday sense – perhaps accurate in the end, but as intangible and incomprehensible to our minds as eternity itself. No. It is also true for small, ordinary people right where we are, today.
As Isaiah 40 concludes, speaking to our very ordinary days, hopes, and burdens, “Even youths grow tired and weary, even young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:30-31)
Certainly, citizens have every reason to vote and to use our freedoms to do all we can to affect change for good at every level of society. As Abraham Lincoln put it, we must act always “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”
But whatever happens in this election, and in every twist and turn of history that follows until Christ returns, all that matters most remains unchanged. We can still live day by day in the love of our heavenly Father. We can still serve our neighbor with sturdy hearts and good cheer, even those who may disagree with us sharply. Just like Christians in every era, from the earliest days of Roman persecution to each century and place and culture since, we can grow daily more like Jesus, care for widows and orphans and their distress, and show an aching world what our Father is really like.
Let us lift up our eyes…
– Jedd Medefind is the President of Christian Alliance for Orphans.
