Pumpkins, Posters & Politics

While the days grow shorter, fall colors are carousing with our natural surroundings. No, the leaves haven’t turned their bright orange or brilliant red yet, but the highways are scattered with political posters as candidates change their colors for this special season. Elections bring out all sorts of flamboyant characters, each claiming to stand in that great tradition for truth, justice and the American way. Well, maybe just the American way, whatever that may be these days when truth and justice seem so elusive to so many of our citizens. Republicans and Democrats strut their banners and sling their slogans throughout the landscapes urging voters to consider their quintessential qualifications.

In the middle of the everchanging plethora of signs, Mother Nature exposes her constant reminders that outlasts all the campaign rhetoric: fresh pumpkins ripe for carving into jack-o-lanterns; tired peach trees; exhausted corn stalks. Silent skies interrupted by honking Canadian geese letting us know they are heading south “ere the winter storms begin.” Crisp weather contrasts with the summer heat, and our air conditioners look forward to their winter hibernation.

No wonder the campaign signs that litter our roads don’t catch our attention. While we may look at them occasionally, we are always looking beyond them to the vivid messages sent to us by a world that is always changing, but always faithful in its promise to support our living with gifts that come with the territory. Around us, all nature sings the old covenant tune that God promised to Noah and his descendants: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” It’s hard to match the campaign promise like that one.

Maybe this is the proper setting for our billboards persuading us to vote for this or that candidate, who are like the leaves of grass in Isaiah’s vision: “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades…” Jesus picked up the same melody when he spoke of the lilies of the field and claimed that even King Solomon, the wisest political officer of Israel, couldn’t hold a candle to this kind of simple symbol of God’s faithfulness. Maybe voters will catch a glimpse of this quiet grandeur of God surrounding all those posters and realize just how temporary our political wisdom is at best and how tenative our human efforts are at their worst. “Put not your trust in princes,” says the psalmist. “When his breath departs he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.”

Don’t misunderstand. I am very passionate about the idea that politics are important, and we have a serious obligation to vote our consciences. It is our way of demonstrating the essence of democracy that if human beings are sacred, then they are surely equal. Hopefully, our consciences are always being informed and reformed by the one who, through the power of politics, was executed with other criminals on a cross. What a reminder of an everlasting campaign promise: love that overcomes hate; peace that overcomes war; and a compassionate God that so loved this world of ours with all its pumpkins, posters and people.