As the nation charges toward the presidential election in November, too many people of faith forget that whoever emerges victorious the night of November 6 will not be victorious of their own accord.  He will be victorious because, for reasons many, sundry, and mostly unknown to us, now and in the years to come, God allowed him to be so.  Within the grand design of history, time, and eternity, whoever is elected president will be elected only by the permission and intentions of God.  He will be the president solely because God has deigned, again, for reasons entirely his own, that he should be so.
     So what if the new American president turns out to be a fraud?  Or what if the president or, alternately, a dictator of another nation, a nation here or in the immediate or distant historical past, is the most repugnant ruler the world has ever seen?  Is this, too, by the hand of God?  Does God really want such people to rule the people he created?
     It is unlikely that God wants such people to rule, that he wants them to inflict untold hardship and heartache on millions of human beings.  But God allows the world to run along as it will, pain and suffering and oppression and all--yet he is always working in it to effect his eternal (and forever good) intention and purpose.  In the end, what God wants to happen will indeed happen.  Regardless of how we may see the might and harm of rulers, God sees them as pawns, mere highly evanescent pawns in a much larger adventure of his making--not theirs.  As the prophet Daniel said long ago, "It is God who changes the times and the epochs; he removes kings and establishes kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those of understanding" (Daniel 2:21).  While we may mourn and despise the actions of those who rule, be it today or many millennia ago, we should always remind ourselves that despite what we may understand or see, God sees and understands more.  As hard as it may be to believe, God always knows what he is doing.  In the end, his good, his absolutely good purpose will prevail.
     And in this we can rejoice, not because things are wonderful, because they rarely are, but because God is working through things to, in the end, make them more wonderful than we can possibly imagine.
     "Relax" and let go of November 6:  it's in God's hands (Psalm 46:10).