Today is almost a week after the United States Presidential Election. Many U.S. citizens exercised the inalienable right to choose the president that best represents them, their values and their agenda. Unfortunately, not everyone is in agreement with the outcome. The country is still in a state of unrest. People protesting the election results in several major cities and across every social media platform. I’m grateful that we have the freedom of speech and the right to express ourselves.
The challenge for me comes when I hear people make some preamble statement followed by, “God is in control.” It’s as if we don’t have a choice in the matter. That the skies open up and a big hand descends to move people and places around like puppets and toys. Regardless of what decision we make, miraculously, a shift or change will happen in their favor. Why choose at all? Because “God is in control.”
I’m not taking anything from God’s divinity. I can’t. I won’t. I would like to bring a perspective to consider the next time someone wants to throw God under the bus. I believe God to be the Creator of the universe and humankind. We have a brain. We have freedom to be, to do and to have whatever we want. We can choose.
We make decisions all the time. Go to work, don’t go to work? Have children, don’t have kids? Date, don’t date? Marry, don’t marry? What to eat for lunch or forgo lunch for a snack and larger dinner? Choose to love my neighbor regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, or be a racist and hate everyone different than me? You see where this is going. Choices. So many of them we don’t even realize. Typically we don’t move around singing Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel,” leaving all these decisions up to God. But we choose. Not God.
In my opinion, God’s part in the election process included the sunrise and waking up humankind on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. All of us with the right and ability to vote could have. Some chose to vote, and others did not. Case closed.
Choose to love instead of hate. Decide to thrive instead of surviving no matter who sits in the Oval Office. We live and die by the choices we make. #TodayIChoose
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