The Bungee Cord 11-14-22

Hello,

As have all of you, last week the fall election took place here in Pennsylvania. Likewise as you, we were flooded with commercials, mailings, and signs purportedly supporting the candidates. I say purportedly because the vast majority of what I heard and saw were not in support of a candidate, but rather in non-support of the candidate’s opponent. Negative advertising. I don’t know about you, but the cascade of negative advertising around here created an atmosphere of toxic odor. Each negative add hit me with a squirt of skunk juice.

Election after election, I hear calls for the elimination of skunkish adds. But the cessation never happens, and the reason why candidates continue to spew these putrid smelling ads is this: they work. Negative adds cast doubts in the minds of the voter. When dirt is dug up about an opponent, people decide that they don’t want to have their names associated with such a slimy candidate, and so they put their name behind the “cleaner” one. Just like gossip around a high school lunch table, half-truths or even complete lies are spread like limburger cheese on a candidate and voters run from that candidate as if that one had just let out a fart in a 3rd grade classroom. Negative ads are strong repellants, turning voters away from one candidate and have those voters vote for the other.

The thing that I find amazing about God is this: negative advertising doesn’t work on God. Worse than the weeks leading up to a political election, God’s ears are daily flooded with negative advertising about me. People look at me and say to God, why would you choose such a one? One who has plenty of dirt to dig up from the foolishness and arrogance of my days. One whose mind unfairly judges others. One whose heart holds anger and revenge, whose eyes are blinded by the logs of my sin but somehow are able to see and rejoice in the speck in my neighbors eye. Someone whose patience for the struggles of others can be as thin as wet toilet paper. Someone who has scarred the lives of others, and brought pain to the heart of God. When it comes to me, the aroma of my life in the nostrils of God makes a skunk’s smell seem like perfume.

And yet….and yet….God has pulled the lever of election and choice for me. Like a voter who would let nothing keep him from voting…not thugs, not danger, not even the devil….God walked right up to the polling place of the cross, stretched out his arms, and with nails pounded through his hands selected me to be his vote. And when he breathed his last, he made that vote eternally unchangeable. Even if he wanted to, it was a vote that could not be changed. No amount of post-election negative advertising could do anything to change his vote. On the cross, God selected and elected me as his child…..forever!

What a vote of grace! Grace enough to take hold of my heart and change me. To change me into one whose heart has the rhythm of God’s, breaking when others’ hearts are being broken. To change me into one whose eyes see the world as God does, seeing each person as gemstones whose beauty may be yet to be uncovered. To change me into one whose ears hear as God’s do, where when even the tiniest tear of fear sounds like the explosion of an atomic bomb as it hits the ground. To change me into one who rests in peace in the embrace of God, instead of one who kicks and screams in this world thinking that can bring peace to my soul.

God voted for me….and you. In spite and despite the stench of the negative advertising that has inundated him about you and me. Why? Is it because we are worthy of his vote? Is it because he hopes that one day we will be worthy of his vote? Is it because God is stupid? I think no to all of these, and I say no to these because God has told us why pulled the lever for us on the cross: God loves you and me. God’s vote may seem senseless, irrational, and maybe even useless, but the depth of God’s love for you and me cancels everything else. God will have it no other way. You and I are to be his….now and forever.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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