Was this political season an opportunity squandered?

All across America today, people are voicing their relief that the 2016 Presidential political campaigns are finally coming to an end.

It’s been a particularly harsh political season, with supporters from both sides of the political aisle sparing no opportunity to bash anyone who doesn’t agree with their positions. Unfortunately, many professing Christians have waded into the mudslinging, publicly name-calling and hurling insults as ugly as anyone else.

Sadly, many Christians have behaved poorly.

The behavior of some Christians this political season reminds me of a story told by a school teacher …

During our class trip to the local pool, one of my first-grade students misplaced her towel. That night, I received a frantic call from the girl’s mother, who said that someone had stolen her daughter’s towel. Trying to calm her down, I asked her to describe the towel. “It’s white,” she snapped, “with Holiday Inn written on it!”

This political season has seen many professing Christians justify their rants of name-calling and disparagements of others as acceptable compared to how others were behaving.

Bad comparison.

Whatever the season, whatever the issue, whatever the activity, the behavior of a disciple of Jesus should always be measured by Jesus Himself, a crucial point Christian professor Mark McMinn makes with the following illustration …

A physicist friend uses this analogy: Each of us is like a light bulb. One shines with 50 watts of holiness, another has only 25 watts. Maybe the most stellar Christians are 200 watts. But these comparisons become trite in the presence of the sun.

If we are children of God, it should be vitally important to us to ACT like children of God in any situation. None of us are perfect at doing this, but looking at the behaviors exhibited during this political season, too many of us didn’t even care to try.

For some of us, this political season was, indeed, an opportunity squandered.

Well, you can’t go back and fix it, but you can go forward with a renewed surrender to God and reliance on the Holy Spirit to empower you to be like Christ, to live holy lives in every situation and circumstance.

How do you plan on going forward tomorrow?

Scotty