Behind Door #2

"concerning the election"

Romans 11:28

I read an interesting article the other day.  I'm sorry, I don't know what magazine it had been in.  I had pulled it out of an old magazine and set it in my read-when-I-get-around-to-it pile.

Oh, you have one of those, too?  Awesome!

Well, I finally got around to reading it, and the focus of the article was on four Presidential elections, about which the writer was asking:  "What if it had gone other way?"  In other words, what if the loser had won?  How would his party/the country/the world have been affected?

It was very interesting.  Very thought-provoking, which is what I look for in my reading.  I think the best books are the ones that have me thinking, long after I've turned the last page. 

Anyhow, the four elections the writer chose were:
   
     1860 ~ Lincoln/Breckinridge/Bell/Douglas
     1912 ~ Wilson/Roosevelt/Taft/Debs
     1932 ~ Roosevelt/Hoover
     1980 ~ Reagan/Carter/Anderson

In each case, it was interesting to look at the politics and platforms of those who did not win, and then extrapolate those to imagine what decisions they might have made, etc.

It was thought-provoking in the immediate because I started thinking of other elections where the same question applied.  Not long after, I came to the conclusion that every Presidential election could justifiably fall under the heading, "Things Would Have Been Really Different If This Had Gone Another Way".

Yup.  All of them.  

The fact of the matter is that like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in South America, everything that happens has an effect on other things.

And that took me to the long-reaching thinking I did after reading that article:  the wondering of the other paths in our lives.  What might have been, if you and I hadn't made the decisions we did.  Or if the people around us hadn't made the decisions they did. 

I once had a vision ~ not any kind of spiritual vision, just a picture in my head of me talking to God.  And I imagined what He'd say if I asked Him why I had to walk down that hard path; why He didn't steer me to an easier path.  And He said, "You should have seen the path I didn't let you take."

Some paths we take under His guidance.  Some we have no choice about.  Some are our personal decisions.  And 99% of the time we have no idea what would have been the circumstances of making a different choice.  And the 1% of the time we think we know how things would have turned out differently, we're wrong.

I think there's a bit of a "go with the flow" lesson here.  Making the best decision we can, and moving forward.  And if there are consequences to be dealt with, or apologies that have to be made for our decisions, then do that.   It's about learning from our mistakes without repeatedly kicking ourselves for them, and trusting Him when He says all things work for good.

~ "And we know that all things work together for good

to those who love God,

to those who are the called according to His purpose" ~

Romans 8:28

~