Psalm 89:11–12

The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.
The north and the south, you have created them.

Becky and I spent a few days at the end of last week on the shore of Lake Michigan with our daughter and her family. It was a glorious time! We drank of the beauty of the earth and rested in the joy of human love – parent, grandparent, sisters, children, and grandchildren.

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. defines sin and its consequences as “not the way it is supposed to be.”  Those 48 hours on Lake Michigan in the glory of God’s creation and with the gift of family were a reminder of how things are supposed to be and how things someday will be.

The photos offer a glimpse of our experience – walking with family beneath a canopy of leaves splashed with the yellows and oranges of October, climbing a towering dune to look across this fifth largest lake in the world, one of the wonders of the created order. Belonging and beauty, serenity and sanctuary. The way it is supposed to be.

It was good to be away.

But now we are back and Tuesday is election day. Here in Indiana, the election offers little drama. Only lesser state offices are to be filled, neither of our senate seats is being contested, and we are mostly a one-party state, though I will do my best to split my ballot without surrendering to the “lesser of two evils” conundrum. I will gladly vote against building a casino in our corner of the state.

The election is about more than making our way to the polling place at the Methodist Church on Tuesday morning, however. As our time with family on the shore of Lake Michigan offered a glimpse of the way things are supposed to be, our elections and our partisan politics have come to reflect so much of the way things are not supposed to be. The crazy fringe has taken the center of both major parties. Families divide and friendships fracture over the personalities of the politicians and the particulars of policies that are more fodder for disagreement than solutions to problems.

Yes, there are candidates who offer more than a lesser of two evils and there are issues (like casinos in northeast Indiana) that demand our attention and our votes. I am not without positions and preferences on any number of issues. Indeed, sometimes our stands will be costly, such are the ways of good citizenship and of Christian discipleship.

As we come to Tuesday’s election and its aftermath – few of us will be happy – it will be important to remember the words of Psalm 89 that the world and all that is in it belongs to God. The lake shore and the fall leaves, the voters and the candidates, are his. To be certain, the beauty of the earth and the joy of human love are often the best reminders of the way things are supposed to be. But so might be politics and elections if we are willing to forgo the sins of anger and arrogance, of seeking our wellbeing in the personalities of politicians and the particulars of their policies.

As Isaac Watts reminds us in his paraphrase of Psalm 90, the God who has been our help in ages past is still our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast.  That’s the way things are supposed to be.