Tom Harzula

A devotion on agonizing elections and the reign of Jesus Christ: Psalm 110 Whenever elections go poorly in our minds, it’s a common thing for Christians to turn to these words from Psalm 110, these words about Jesus Christ, the Son of David, sitting at the right hand of the Father with His enemies as His footstool. In moments of political terror, we like to remind ourselves not to trust in earthly kings but to trust only the King of Kings. This is good, right, and salutary, of course. As long as we mean the right thing by it. We shouldn’t mean, “look, God’s still in charge and He’ll take care of us and we’ll all be fine.” We shouldn’t cite these words to make an appeal to political moderacy. Certainly, we all have a tendency to overvalue how dire the stakes are in the moment, but, at the same time, well, sometimes things are dire. Those who refuse to protect the lives of the unborn are inviting God to pour out His wrath upon them. Those who refuse to see the unique threat that Islam has always posed and still poses to the Christian world are inviting bloodshed and chaos into their neighborhoods. And many faithful Christians before you trusted that Christ was on His throne and still were caught up in the earthly chastisement of God or the evil He permitted to fall on them. So while it’s far more likely that those screaming about worst case scenarios are being hysterical than prophetic, it’s still true that Christ being on His throne is not a promise that our earthly kingdoms won’t be torn apart by civil war or nuclear weapons or a thousand other horrors. Rather, when we confess that Christ is on His throne and that His enemies are under His feet, we are confessing that there is no cell of your flesh that is under the power of the devil, which means that there is not a cell of your flesh that can be lost to bombs or bullets or bayonettes or the jaws of the wolf. We are confessing that, even if your neighbors vote to tear you limb from limb, your limbs don’t belong to them. They belong to Jesus, who will claim those limbs as His own and clothe them in His sin-killing glory on the last day. Christ being on His throne means that, when we in our political foolishness have torn the world apart, our Lord will forgive our evil, lift us out of the muck of our own making, and welcome us into His embrace. Christ being on His throne means that our greatest moments of political glory will not compare to the heavenly glory we witness when He casts Satan into the pit and welcomes us into His embrace, just as it means that our deepest political despair, no matter how bloody, will not survive the moment the One who bled for us calls us out of the grave and into His glorious Kingdom. Maybe things are not as bad as you think. Maybe they’re unfathomably worse. And maybe every earthly victory you’re boasting of today will be ripped out of your heart by tomorrow. No man knows. But God knows you. The Son He sent to make you know Him now sits on His throne. And in His own time, He will destroy everything that tore you up but could not tear you away from Him.

You don’t know what comes next. You don’t know how to fix what is shattered. Jesus knows it all. He will lead you through every fire and you will not be consumed.