What's really important this fall

Like most cities around our nation, Minot is slowly becoming blanketed with campaign posters for every office from US Senate to county sheriff. The next month and a half will only be more of the same. It is a privilege in our nation to be able to have a say in who leads us politically, so I support politics and we should support the candidates who demonstrate the greatest character qualities for service.

At the same time, politics is rarely as important as we think. It is of immediate but not ultimate importance. Isaiah 40 reminds of that.

Behold, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales....All the nations are as nothing before [God], they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. (vv. 15 & 17)

This morning the news was all abuzz about a conflict between China and Japan over who controls the fishing waters which separate them. According to Isaiah, they will soon be forgotten. How important is it that we as America retain our economic and military supremacy in the world? According to Isaiah, our 300 million people and two hundred plus year history and rise to dominance is 'less than nothing.' We're not as important as we think - nor are any of the political campaigns so strongly under way.

What is truly important? Isaiah continues,

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent...who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness....The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. (vv. 22-23, 28)

Even better, such a God is not just great, to us His people He is gracious. Listen to how Isaiah begins the chapter:

Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity (sin) is pardoned.... (vv. 1-2)

Our world is full of news, and some of it is important, but only the good news of God's greatness and grace to us in Jesus is ultimate. Let's put our greatest hope in Him this fall, the one 'Politician' who rules perfectly.