Don’t brag about tomorrow, since you don’t know what the day will bring. PROVERBS 27:1 (NLT)

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Election Day is finally here! Do you know what this means? It means tomorrow’s television ads will be about Christmas. 

We have been warned not to expect a clear winner tonight in the presidential election. All of the mail-in votes have to be counted. Some of those ballots were printed incorrectly and will not go through the scanner correctly. Therefore, they will have to be counted by hand, further slowing the process. 

Since I have a little procedure scheduled tomorrow morning, I will not stay up too late watching the returns. National elections always include some surprises.  Four years ago, everyone was certain Her Hilaryness was going to be our president. All the polls said so. Yet when I looked at the New York Timeswebsite and their vote estimator, it showed The Donald as the most likely winner. I was shocked. 

This morning at Bacon’s in Hurst and Denny’s in Dallas and in the Waffle House in College Station, men will gather over coffee and confidently assert what is going to happen. If you listen carefully, you will hear it both ways. Or several different ways. The truth is, nobody knows for sure until all the votes are counted. And don’t get me started on how some people seem to find votes long after the voting is over!

Over thirty years ago, I added today’s verse to my Friday prayer list. Chuck Swindoll wrote a devotional about how people are, like the song says, livin’ for the weekend. People live for one day, someday, some special occasion or event. In focusing too much on the future, they miss the joys, delights, and responsibilities of today. 

There are some things we cannot foresee. There is no guarantee tomorrow is going to be like today. This is one of the problems with strategic planning. Oftentimes people assume ten years from now will be just like today. Some things will be the same. Others will be radically different. 

In other words, you might not want to confidently declare your favored candidates as winners until all the votes are in, counted, recounted, and so on. You might want to slow your roll concerning that golden new age your party is bringing to bless the whole world. You might want to ease up on your pontifications and messages of doom and disaster. 

There is a bigger plan at work than any political party can accelerate or hinder. Our Father in heaven was not thrown off by Nero, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, or any other despot or Democrat, nor any other rogue or Republican. 

Instead of boasting about tomorrow and our plans to bend the world to our will, let us follow the advice of James 4:15, 16:

What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will do this or that.” Otherwise you will be boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.

Don’t boast about tomorrow. Instead, trust God today. Trust God every day. Trust God for all your tomorrows. Confidently step into each new day by saying to him, “Whatever you want, that’s what I want too.” 

Feel free to brag on God. He has never lost an election yet, and he never will. 

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I will trust God all day every day for all I can see and all I cannot.

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Our Father, you tell us to make plans according to your principles and guidance. You tell us to hold those plans loosely. You tell us to trust you each day for our daily bread, for what we need when we need it. You tell us that where you guide, you provide. Here we are at this year’s version of The Most Important Election Ever. We will trust you no matter the results. Our hope is not in the White House. Our hope is in heaven, in you. Amen.