I found a bracelet on the warehouse floor the day our contracts terminated. Black plastic wristband, the kind the kids wear. God has got this, is what it said. I asked the younger probable believer drivers if they had lost it. Nobody claimed it. Obviously it fell from heaven to get our hopes up as we prepared to walk out and negotiate new contracts. I put it on. Tight, uncomfortable fit, sort of like the call to hope during abject despair, the call to wisdom in the clamor of populism.
The week plodded on. A dear family member passed away, another family member faced being sentenced to prison. God has got this became a healing salve, an almost incredulous possibility that all things will work together for good. Then came the election and our nation, under God, divided. Folks I knew, and respected, voted in a way incomprehensible to me. The will of God got dragged into the political muck and mire as a rationale for insult, injury, and injustice.
We went back to work on a provisional contract. Thirty days to see how things work out. It should have been at least a moderately happy turn of events but the election cast us into camps of them. I was not convinced God wanted this result and stopped wearing the bracelet as it threatened to become an emblem of the gloating suddenly surrounding us. I felt I needed to defend my God from slander and not knowing how to do that I hid Him away in my frustrated confusion.
My wife and I went to Scripture for comfort and insight and accidentally came across Isaiah 32.
Behold, a King will reign in righteousness, and His princes will rule with justice, as a hiding place from the howling wind, a cover from the tempest, a river of water in a dry place, a shadow of a great rock in a scorched and weary land. The eyes of those who see will be able to see the truth, the ears of those who hear will listen, even the hotheads will be full of sense and understanding, and angry stammerers will be ready to speak plainly.
In that day ungodly fools will not be heroes. Scoundrels will not be respected. The foolish person will no longer be called generous, nor the miser said to be bountiful, for the fool will speak foolishness and his heart will work iniquity, to keep the hungry unsatisfied, to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail, for the schemes of the schemer are evil; he devises wicked plans to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy seek justice.
But a generous man constructs generous things, and by generosity he will stand.
I am going to look for someone to give the bracelet to, someone I might be tempted to put outside my camp. God has me right where He wants me to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. He has prepared a banquet in the sight of my enemies and issued the invitation to come and taste that the Lord is good. Love your enemy. God has got this in common with His people. They will know we are Christians, by our love, not by our ballot.
