Oh, how easy it is to be sucked into the vortex of anxiety.
The closer the election came, the harder it was to remember to live the words I
had written. All the hype--the FaceBook postings, the phone calls, the
mailings—were each annoying, but they added to each other. And I would think
about what it would mean if the other candidate were elected. The nagging of
anxious ants crept into my place, and I let them push me out of my center.
I was forgetting something very important. I don’t mean I
really forgot, but I certainly wasn’t remembering with my full awareness. God’s
will is not about this candidate or that candidate. While I believe that God
cares about us in each particular moment, it is arrogant to assume that any one
of us at any moment is able to claim that we know the fullness of God’s will
and that we will make it
happen.
The night of the election, I was reading Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir,
by Stanley Hauerwas. Towards the end of the book, he writes about the response
in our nation to the attacks of 9/11/01. Many had said that the events of that
day forever changed our lives, and while there is no denying that the loss of
our naiveté has launched us into a whirl of rhetoric and war, Stanley reminds
us “that Jesus' death on the cross forever changed all that exists, including
us.”[i]
I read those words, and my center, or my awareness of it, returned. Today I wrote to thank him:
I read those words, and my center, or my awareness of it, returned. Today I wrote to thank him:
In the midst of the latter days of this anxious
election season, I found great hope and solace in your book. Any control we
seem to have or any lack of control that makes us anxious is all an illusion.
This whole endeavor of life is lived with the aegis of our God who is the One
who brought us into being, who came into our midst to redeem us and who calls
to us without end into the purposeful grace of God’s reign.
Election night, I went to bed without knowing how any
state’s status was declared and didn’t learn any results until I woke the next
morning. Neither re-elected President Obama nor a potential Romney presidency
would or will bring about the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom is already among us
and near at hand. Our job is live and worship as though the One we worship
makes all the difference in the world, regardless of what the world might
think. And that is what it is all about.
[i] (Stanley Hauerwas. Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir
(Kindle Location 3777). Kindle Edition.)
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