I’ve always been a bit of a news junkie.  I just can’t help myself.

As is often the case, I should listen to C.S. Lewis and follow his advice. Lewis famously described reading newspapers as a waste of time and counseled against it.

Among some of the things Lewis said about reading the newspaper (or scanning your newsfeed):

• I never read the papers. Why does anyone? They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.
• I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be seen before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn. 

I wasted a fair amount of time on Wednesday reading news accounts and analyses of Tuesday’s election. I suppose I will have to unlearn most of what I read.

In fact, day-after analysis is notoriously unworthy of remembering.

The day after Abraham Lincoln’s speech at the dedication of the national cemetery in Gettysburg, the Chicago times reported that the speech was filled with “silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances.” The Times of London described it as “dull and commonplace.”

Be careful what you say the day after.

On the day after the election, I read this from a Democratic Party official:

• “This is a historic disaster of Biblical proportions. The Democratic Party, as it is, is dead. This is a historic realignment.”

I always wonder if those who describe things as a “disaster of Biblical proportions” have read the Bible. Are they referring to Noah’s flood or Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt?  Or theologically perceptive, are they thinking of our First Parents’ decision to eat of the forbidden fruit? In any case, the term likely does not fit – and we won’t know so for years.

Also on the day after the election, a popular voice on the Christian Right offered:

• “Hallelujah, it’s a great day in America.  Thank you, Jesus for hearing our prayers.”

Lincoln seems better to understand God and prayer. In his Second Inaugural Address, he speaks of those opposing each other in the Civil War, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. …The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

No doubt prayers were offered by supporters of the now President Elect and by those who supported the Vice President. Lincoln was correct. The prayers of both could not be answered – that of neither has been answered fully. It will be some time, if ever, before we understand the purposes of the Almighty on Election Day, 2024.

The first line of the first verse of the morning Psalm on November 5 was, “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”  (Psalm 62:1)

I have wasted too much time reading election news and analysis. Waiting for God alone is never a waste of time.