Well, the election is over, and by now you’re aware that former president Trump is now President-Elect Trump.

How are you feeling? Delighted? Relieved? Angry? Depressed?

I don’t pretend to know why the vote went the way it did, but the article “My Long Road from Truman to Trump,” by Bartle Bull, Sr., might give some insight. He reels off his liberal credentials like the Apostle Paul lists his Apostle credentials in 2 Corinthians 11.16 – 33. He opens this way:

I’ve been an outspoken Democrat since 1948, when I was the only student in my fifth-grade class to “vote” for Harry Truman. It’s been astonishingly difficult to disclose that next month I will vote for Donald Trump.

Like many, I will be doing so in the European way, voting for a party and its issues, rather than in the American way of supporting someone I like. When I have expressed my views—on economics, security and cultural matters—long-time liberal friends have said, “You sound like Trump, or some uneducated hillbilly.” Ignoring my schooling at Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne, these friends sound like well-meaning dilettantes, otherwise described as self-righteous, useful idiots or bien-pensant.

Such responses prompt me to compare my own liberal credentials with theirs. This makes me a difficult adversary, as I have long been an extremely useful idiot, overloaded with liberal credentials.

To name a few…

The article is worth the read in its entirety if you’re wondering why some Democrats didn’t vote for Harris, just as some Republicans didn’t vote for Trump. This morning Republican Liz Cheney, an outspoken Harris supporter wrote:

Our nation’s democratic system functioned last night and we have a new President-elect. All Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections.

With that in mind, let’s take a deep breath and get some perspective. First,

Salvation will never arrive on Air Force One. – Chuck Colson

Second, let’s remember that the United States is a pretty resilient country. Matthew Hennessey, deputy editorial features editor for the Wall Street Journal, wrote an optimistic piece published October 30, 2024: The Election Will End. The World Won’t. Here’s a snippet:

Both sides are treating this election as a potential apocalypse. Everything is on the line. The party is over for good if the wrong party wins. But is it? Is the American experiment really so close to the edge?

Not from where I’m sitting. If you zoom out—and I mean way out—things are going pretty well in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are on the cusp of our 250th birthday. We still have our republican form of government, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, despite some close calls. Roughly 2% of the population lost their lives in the Civil War—the equivalent of 6.5 million people today. In the 20th century we made it through two world wars, a great depression, the assassination of two presidents and the resignation of another, the trauma of Vietnam and the fall of communism. Even after all that we stood tall as the world’s sole superpower.

Sept. 11, 2001, didn’t kill us. Neither did the housing collapse nor the financial crisis. We beat Covid. We even survived the ugly Trump administration and its uglier backlash.

The U.S. boasts an innovative and resilient economy that is the envy of the world. We live longer and better than our grandparents did. Our universities and companies are magnets for global talent. We invented the telephone, the airplane, the automobile, and the internet. We’ve given the world jazz, rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop. We have Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Wall Street is still top dog. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency and U.S. Treasurys are the world’s safest investment.

Face it: This country is far from average...

True, and the border crisis itself is evidence: people want to live here!

He ends with:

Whatever happens in the weeks and months ahead, don’t get carried away and don’t despair. Take, if you can, the long view. Winter is coming, but spring is always around the corner.

Encouraging…but I’m not sure the last sentence is true. All of our resilience and prosperity will continue…until it doesn’t. Israel was at the top of the world, literally, as described in 1 Kings 10.14 – 29. But the glory doesn’t even last through Solomon’s reign, and the kingdom splits right after.

It’s been a good ride for the US, and maybe it continues…25 years? 50 years? 100 years? No one knows, except it won’t continue forever – nothing does. As believers we need to be focused on a different Kingdom:

Your Kingdom come… (Lord’s prayer, Matthew 6.10)

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12.28, ESV)

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. (2 Peter 3.10 – 14, NIV)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21.1 – 4, ESV)