Jesus saves through the cross, not elections

Many days I see the value and opportunity in social media. Many days I do not. Many days I see the opposite. Today is one of those days.

Maybe today will finally be my last day here.

I honestly can understand how yesterday's election results feel like an assault to some groups and the way they want to live their lives.

And I honestly can understand how yesterday's election results feel like a gift to some groups and the way they want to live their lives.

But the heartbreak to me, the challenge, the strong pull away from here that makes me feel like I no longer belong, is the story being told by many Christians about this election result.

Not all, certainly, but my many.

It's especially heartbreaking to me because at the heart of why I show up here every day is to point people to the hope that has buoyed me though some of the most agonizingly hopeless moments of my life, and that is Jesus.

The Jesus who has literally saved my life.

So to hear many suggest that God showed up yesterday to save our country, to me that minimizes the day that God showed up and once and for all saved us all. No election result has ever or will ever add to or take away from the nails, from the suffering, from the excruciating torture Jesus took on for every person and every country so they would never have to worry about being saved again.

Oh, how I bet Jesus wishes saving a country would have been so simple as an election.

And on that cross, Jesus promised there will never again be an ebb and flow of hope. I get why people who don't follow or depend on Jesus feel more or less hopeful today, I do. But I do not understand at all the narrative that suggests, from Christians, that today is a day to be more hopeful than yesterday.

Jesus is no more or less dying on a cross today.

And it breaks my heart that we, as Christians, knowingly or unknowingly, directly or indirectly, send the message to the hopeless looking for a story of hope they can lean on, be sustained by, can trust, that there are life experiences or events that bring a hope to them today that was not available yesterday.

On the cross.

The hope of Jesus is never dependent on the outcomes of this world. The hope of Jesus is never dependent on the outcome of an election. The hope of Jesus never has the time or interest to differentiate between any of the ways we ourselves differentiate each other as we hand out hope.

And so if I never come here again, which feels entirely possible, I want to leave you with this pointing to the hope that is available to you any day, any time. It's the hope that died on a cross, to save you and me and every country and municipality once and for all, a hope that rose from the dead so that we would never be fooled again by what the true nature of hope really is - the power to overcome everything that looks and feels like death in our lives.

No election has that power. Nor does any human. They never have and they never will.

Yours will be the only name that matters to me
The only one whose favor I seek
The only name that matters to me
Yours will be
The friendship and affection I need
To feel my Father smiling on me
The only name that matters to me
And Yours is the name the name that has saved me
Mercy and grace, the power that forgave me
And Your love is all I’ve ever needed

~Big Daddy Weave