God has called me to pastor the church I love.  One of our precious members suffered a stroke a couple days ago, and Michelle and I were called to the hospital.  We arrived at the busiest ER in the city around 8PM only to be overwhelmed by the mass of people waiting to be seen.  Sick and injured people were sprawled out from one end of the large waiting room to the other.  The medical staff seemed to be overwhelmed with the amount of people who needed their attention.  Getting someone’s attention so that Michelle and I could go into the ER was not an easy task.  We waited quite a while.

While we were waiting, we saw someone we knew – someone we hadn’t seen in years.  He and his brother were escorted quickly back into the ER, and we heard him mention that his father, Ted, was back there.  Ted used to be our neighbor, and we had interacted with him a lot over the five years we lived across the street from him.  He is an older, single man who has struggled with his health for some time.  We used to take him meals, help him with his yard work, and help tutor his son in math – all in the attempt to be good neighbors and to share the love of Christ with him.  After moving away and then returning nearly three years later to another neighborhood, we lost contact with Ted.  But as the Lord would have it, the night we were at the overcrowded ER to visit one person, it just so happens that Ted was there too.  Coincidence or sovereignty?

I ended up spending some precious time with the woman I had come to see that night, but Michelle and I were also able to reconnect with an old neighbor and his sons – all of whom are in need of the saving grace of Jesus.

I think I’ll keep my day job!

But there is a very important implication of this truth that we must also often remember.  David says that the Lord has established His throne for justice.  Literally, the Lord has established His throne in order to decide.  He goes on to say that the Lord is a righteous judge who judges us with uprightness (literally “evenness, equity”).

Knowing that the Lord is still on his throne and is judging the world with fairness and evenness should be a source of great hope for us believers.  But, it should also cause us to pause as well.

Psalms 11:4 says that “the Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test, the children of man.”  The word test literally means to search out or to examine.  The Lord is sitting on His throne, and He is searching and examining us to see what and who we really are.

So, if it’s true that the Lord sits on His throne and judges (he decides as He observes the world), then a question we must all wrestle with is: What will the Lord decide about us?

I woke up this morning with a renewed sense of expectancy and anticipation. Today truly does start a “new day” in our country. There’s a new president-elect, several new senators, and the congress will look a lot different in the days to come, but this is not what I’m giddy about.

I’m giddy, overjoyed, and excited not about the results of the election necessarily…but that Obama’s victory speech last night marked the end of an incredibly long and annoying election season. Let the prognosticating and predicting end. We now know who won, and now we can move forward. The airwaves will no longer be diseased with politicians spewing their rhetoric, mudslinging, and hollow promises. It’s safe again to watch television and listen to the radio without having to worry about being politically accosted.

All skepticism aside (which is hard for me to do), last night was also a good night because not only did the people of the United States speak with their votes…but the Lord of the universe spoke with the results. Romans 13:1 says that all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. What happened last night was not the result of millions of people voting for their favorite candidates, but the result of the God of the universe placing men and women into positions of authority in order to accomplish His purposes.

Yesterday, Michelle and I voted. Then we came home, grabbed some good food and drinks, turned on the television and watched the election results with our kids. It was a party atmosphere in our home. We were not partying because the candidates we voted for were winning. That wasn’t the point. Most of them lost. We were partying because we knew that no matter what happened last night, the almighty God of the universe was powerfully and perfectly placing the people He wants into positions of authority. So we watched and went to bed fully confident that what the Lord did last night was good and right.

As I was tucking Taylor and Alexis into bed last night, Taylor said something pretty profound. He is a pray-er, and he regularly prays through a long list of requests that he’s accumulated over the years. This list includes lots of family members and friends, but it also includes President Bush. Taylor regularly prays for him. As I was preparing to pray with the two of them before turning out the lights, Taylor said, “I guess I’ll have to add Barack Obama to my prayer list.” What an incredible statement from a 12 year old! In 1 Timothy 2:2, we’re told to pray for the people in authority over us, and Taylor takes that verse very seriously.

Yep. Evidently the Lord prefers eHarmony’s scientific screening process over our relational screening process. I’d be pretty angry about all of this if the match wasn’t such a good one, but it is. Both are solid believers. She was a church secretary for years, and he is currently a pastor. She spent her growing up years in Detroit, and he currently lives in Detroit. He is known for being fun and social, and she loves to entertain. I could go on and on, but the point is this: God used eHarmony to make a really good match. Dare I say: “A match made in heaven”?!

As Michelle and I lick our matchmaking wounds over the fact that we were trumped by an inanimate dating web site, I think we’re both being reminded once again of something pretty profound: God will use anything He wants to accomplish His purposes. Think about it. He’s been known to use a hungry whale, a talking donkey, a burning bush, a pink-haired lady, talking vegetables, books with shaky end-time theology, and ridiculously cheesy gospel tracts (more on that coming soon). If He can use these ridiculously bizarre things to accomplish His purposes in this world, then we need to:

1) Stop being so surprised. God is so unbelievably creative. He loves to do things in mysterious and uncanny ways. Awe is good. Shock is not.

2) Stop losing hope. God often allows things to get to the “next to impossible” stage before He takes action. This is how He grows our faith. Hopelessness should be a foreign concept to Christ followers.

3) Stop trying so hard to set up our single friends. We all do it, and sometimes it works. Usually, however, the Lord has something much more unconventional in mind, like a sappy web site. Therefore, save your breath, pray more for your single friends, and secretly sign them up on eHarmony.