Exercising Your Right

Tomorrow is Election Day. The outcome of citizens streaming to the polls will determine who serves in the White House for the next four years. For those of us who voted early, it will be a bit anticlimactic. We’ve already cast our ballot for our candidate of choice – or the lesser of two evils – however you happen to regard the options.

But the key to this act is it’s our right – and a privilege at the same time. The Constitution guarantees that citizens of the United States have the right to vote, expressing their preference of persons they wish to represent them in government. But it’s also a privilege. Many nations do not offer such a right. Leaders command by force, and citizens of those lands are ruled without having influence in the matter.

Sadly, many of our fellow Americans will “elect” not to vote, either out of apathy, inconvenience, the conviction that neither candidate deserves their vote, or simply because they didn’t take time to register. Too bad, because it’s a wonderful right to participate in the selection of those that lead our nation.

The great question, of course, is who will win. Already there is gnashing of teeth over what will happen if “my” candidate doesn’t win. Our country will “go to hell in a hand-basket,” people argue. Strangely, we hear this complaint from both sides.

Years ago we didn’t have early voting, so first Tuesdays of November were special days, everyone streaming to their election sites en masse. We’d wait anxiously for results, without much clue about what the outcome would be. Today, however, it seems everyone does polls, projecting who will win, garnering the most electoral votes. We even get reports on early voting. So some of the suspense is gone.

But suspense is gone in another respect, too. For everyone fearful of what will happen if the opposition candidate wins – liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat – we have assurance from the Bible.

In 1 Timothy 2:1-2, the apostle Paul writes, “I urge, therefore, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanks giving be made for everyone, for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quite lives with all godliness and holiness.” What that says to me is no elected official is beyond God’s control.

It also says, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1).

If we believe this, it means God is not in heaven wringing His hands, fretting over who wins the election. He’s got it figured out. “I’ve got this,” He’s telling us. That’s not to say we shouldn’t vote, shrugging our shoulders and concluding, “Why bother, if God’s already got it handled?” We still have the responsibility – and stewardship – to take part in the political process, even when we feel what we do is of little consequence.

The confidence we can have is that the “governing authorities,” just as everything else in this world, fall under God’s sovereign will and direction, so whether our candidate of choice wins or not, we need not fear the future. 

As a great speaker once said, “God knows what He’s doing, and He does it quite well.”