My father is 84 years old, yet was asked this year, as he has been asked several times over the last few years, to lead the team running a local polling station for the big election. He agreed.
It is a grueling task for a man of his years. The voters were lined up 100 deep when he arrived to open the doors Tuesday morning. The numbers never let up, and he still had a 100 to go when the polls were supposed to close, nearly 14 hours later.
His team tells me Dad never took a break. Never ate lunch. Never stopped, even when the arthritis in his legs and ankles wouldn’t let him stand anymore. He directed the voting from a folding chair, beyond exhaustion but keeping things moving, unwilling to shirk what he saw as his responsibility.
His supervisors sent in observers, not to detect cheating, but to see how Dad did it. His, they said, was the busiest but best-run polling station in the county.
Later, as the materials and equipment were being put away, one of his co-workers came to offer his hand. “You’re a Republican, and I’m a Democrat,” he said. “But I can’t imagine anyone doing this better than you have.”
I say that, not just to brag on Dad, but in salute to so many, many, many volunteers all over this country who tried so hard to produce a fair election – who genuinely wanted to do this for their community, for their country. I love to stand in the voting line, and watch. It’s a moving thing, a beautiful thing, to watch America voting.
The story goes that Abraham Lincoln spent the election night of January 5, 1859, awaiting the results at a little telegraph office down the road from his home. It was the proverbial “dark and stormy night,” not only in terms of the weather, but the results – at least, for Lincoln. He lost a fairly close contest in his efforts to unseat Stephen Douglas as U.S. Senator from Illinois.
Once it became clear that he had lost, a depressed Lincoln stepped out into the tumultuous downpour and trudged toward home. Somewhere along the way, absorbed in his morbid thoughts, he lost his footing on a smooth stretch of mud and did a little dance, there in the rain, trying to catch his balance and not go headfirst into the muck. He succeeded, took one or two more tentative steps, and then paused.
“It’s a slip,” he said to himself. “Not a fall.”
A great number of people all over the country prayed earnestly, fervently, faithfully for the Lord to mercifully deliver us from all of this. To accomplish justice. To work His will in the life and future of our country.
We have to believe that He heard our prayers. And that the events of this week, and the weeks to come, are His answer. Yet, as the reports of corruption multiply, and increasingly dark prospects loom for our nation, the questions remain – questions asked by so many of His faithful across so many centuries.
“Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” Jeremiah asked. “Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?”
“If the foundations are destroyed,” David wondered, “what can the righteous do?”
David, at least, took comfort not only in the Lord’s sense of justice, but in His sense of humor.
“The wicked plots against the just, And gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, For He sees that his day is coming.”
I like that idea – of God, laughing. And while I confess I don’t entirely get the joke just yet, ‘m sure I will. The Lord has a much keener wit than I do.
Jeremiah, too, took a measure of peace from the long view … the one best expressed, perhaps, by his fellow prophet, Habakkuk, who knew what it was to pray for deliverance, and still see destruction coming for the nation he loved. He wrote:
“Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls—
“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
“The Lord God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills.”
The hills are slippery, they tell me. But His deer up there don’t fall.
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