I was asked to record a spot on the local radio station on the day before the national election, but it will air several days later. So please bear with me in this tricky assignment.

The atmosphere is charged with the anxiety of this year’s election, and you deserve to hear something that can help you address your concerns. I assume that if you are listening to this, you are a person of faith. That faith enables you to face the world’s troubles with hope and courage. 
I would like to offer a couple of practical suggestions for navigating these times. One that you might expect is encouragement to go to the scriptures for comfort and guidance. Here is one passage. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippian church, chapter 4, verses 6 & 7: "Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks. Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus."

This verse is a great encouragement, and we are wise to follow Paul’s advice. Only God can give us the peace that transcends the busy-ness, the rush and the anxieties of our lives. 

But how do we sustain such peace? We need to be able to function from a place of quiet confidence and stability so that circumstances of our lives do not throw us into despair. Much of our exhaustion and anxiety about the election come from exposure to a bombardment of disquieting messages that shake us up. But that doesn’t have to happen.

I recently read a spiritual biography of Howard Thurman by Lerita Coleman Brown entitled What Makes You Come Alive. Thurman is considered by many to be the “godfather of the civil rights movement.” Thurman grew up as a black person in Florida during the Jim Crow era. Conditions were brutal in the south, but particularly in his state. In addition to that, he felt rejected by the church when they refused to do his father’s funeral. 

As a boy, Howard retreated often into nature, in silence. There he felt God’s presence deeply and grew into an understanding of his call to help others have the same experience. Silence and solitude enabled him to ground himself in his identity as a beloved child of God, regardless of the harsh treatment endured by all of the black people in his environment.

Thurman taught that one must operate from an inner authority, a deep knowledge and confidence in one’s own giftedness, competence and personality. Other people’s expectations and behavior need not determine one’s thoughts and actions. He wrote, 
“If a person knows what word he can use to address you so as to draw you off balance, he can always keep you at his mercy. The basis of inner togetherness, one’s sense of inner authority, must never be at the mercy of factors in one’s environment, however significant they may be. Nothing from outside a man can destroy him until he opens the door and lets it in…Whatever determines how you feel on the inside controls in large part the destiny of your life.” (Thurman in Deep is the Hunger)

See, regardless of which candidate was elected to be our president, whoever will become our representatives and senators and local leaders, they cannot determine our identity or our values. We are the gatekeepers of our inner lives, where our motivations must be developed. If we let other people tell us what to think and how to behave, we will be at the mercy of their mistakes and their self-serving agendas.

Jesus did not let other people tell him how to know and serve God. He spent time with God himself, and he acted and taught from that place of authority. The gospels attest to the people’s amazement about the authority with which he taught and healed people. Jesus knew who he was and where his identity came from.

The writer of 1 John acknowledges the deceitful spirits that surround his readers, but he encourages them with these words: “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”  (1 Jn 4.4)

There is deceit and greed everywhere you look these days. Nobody has the market cornered in that regard. We struggle to know whom to trust. The psalmist reminds us that we cannot put our trust in any president or army or political platform. (Ps 20.7; 146.3) We need a greater authority.
Thurman distinguishes between inner authority (small case letters) and Inner Authority (capitalized). I already said that the lower case inner authority is grounded on one’s true self and not the self we develop to please other people. God gave us this inner authority, having made each of us uniquely to enjoy life in harmony with others. 

The capitalized Inner Authority goes even deeper. It comes from God’s Spirit who dwells within us and reassures us that we are God’s children. It is the deep knowledge that even though we are broken and sinful like everyone else, we are forgiven, and we are called blameless in God’s eyes. (2 Corinthians 5.21) We are freed from our sin to come alive with God’s life in us. Nobody can touch that. 

As God’s children we do not lord it over other people. We do not have to convince other people that we are right and they are wrong. We simply act the way God acts, and that is all about love. That is what Jesus taught and what he did. Remember? He said the greatest commandments are to love God and love each other as we love ourselves. He said that greater love has no one than the one who lays down their life for their friends. And then he did that.

So, what do we do in the wake of the election? Some of us will be happy about it, and some of us will be distressed. The deep divisions are sure to remain among us. We may feel helpless about those divisions and wonder how to relate to friends, neighbors and family members who are on the other side of the political divide.

We do not have to be subject to these anxieties. Instead we can claim our identity as God’s beloved children. We can set the intention to follow Jesus in his ways, laying down our lives for others, including our so-called enemies. We can seek common ground, and listen, and care. In other words, we can love.

There is not a lot you can control about the anxiety in the public square right now, my friends. But you can do this: you can pause every day to remember who you are, whose you are. And you can love. Yes, you can do that, always. Thanks be to God, whose love defines us and invites us forward to the life that is truly life, as beloved followers of Jesus Christ.