Smith, Greg dot com

I'm not often spot-on with predictions about the future, but I'm totally confident of this: tomorrow morning, about half of America -- and a big chunk of the world -- is going to be depressed and angry.

Whoever wins the election a lot of folks are going to start spinning through the whole grief cycle: shock, denial, four-letter-words-shouted-at-the-TV anger, vainly looking for a way out (I'm guessing legal challenges to the outcome), can't-bear-to-get-out-of-bed despondency chock full 'o incontinent fear, a full cafeteria food fight of accusations and blame. The more adaptable among us will move quickly to acceptance and start scheming a way to survive and prosper under the new regime.

Yeah, it's gonna be a rough morning for the losers. Odds are, I'll be one of them and I'm not going to feel like writing anything. So I thought that I'd go ahead and upload my thoughts ahead of the outcome...

In 587 BC the Babylonian empire, under the emperor Nebuchadnezzar, sacked the city of Jerusalem. They had besieged the city ten years earlier, then backed off, having intimidated the royal class of Jerusalem into submission.

Throughout this period there was one voice who consistently warned the people of Jerusalem about their approaching doom: Jeremiah. He was a reluctant prophet, not wanting to be only known as the bringer of bad news, hated and brutalized by the people and the regime for telling them what they didn't want to hear. They didn't want to hear that because the people and leaders of Jerusalem had turned their backs on God and done blasphemous things he was going to bring the Babylonians back, as the instrument of his judgment, to destroy the city, the temple and the nation of Israel.

Jeremiah's warnings and pleadings went ignored -- in fact they persecuted him for undermining the "hope" and "change" that the new regime was bringing in Jerusalem, and the time finally ran out.

In 597 BC Nebuchadnezzar had placed Zedekiah on the throne of Jerusalem as a vassal, and when he had managed to not only alienate God but his imperial master as well, the Babylonians came back -- as Jeremiah had foretold -- in 587 BC. They killed Zedekiah's descendants in front of him and plucked out his eyes so that their death would the the last thing he ever saw. They took Zedikiah into captivity along with with the most prominent members of the aristocracy and the brightest of the young people (including a young man named Daniel and three friends of his named Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego -- go read your Bible to find out about them). The Babylonians then burnt the temple, destroyed the city's walls. Much of the remaining population of Judah, seeing to future living amidst the rubble and ruin and fearing the further reprisals from Nebuchadnezzar, fled to Egypt.

The prophet Jeremiah is credited with writing not only the biblical Book of Jeremiah but also the book of Lamentations. Lamentations is written amidst the ruin of the destroyed city. The walls are rubble, the temple is a smoking heap, the homes and markets and workshops are full of ashes and fresh corpses. Refugees are streaming out of the city while those too old, too young or too heartbroken to leave weep in the streets. Jeremiah walks the streets lamenting that it all came to this. He does issue the inevitable "I told you so" while crying over the tragedy.

But in the Book of Lamentations, in the midst of the still-smoking ruins and still-stinking corpses, Jeremiah issues words of genuine hope and change. As the old women and the orphans weep over their dead families and dead city, he says:

Lamentations 3:17-23

I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.

So I say, "My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD."

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

As they say, go and read the whole thing.

Here's my point, written the day before the morning after. Many of us are going to be depressed tomorrow. Some of us are predicting that the outcome of this election is going to lead to a destruction of American prosperity and prestige almost as bad as what happened to Jerusalem in 587 BC. The circulated emails I've been getting forwarded by all my conservative friends, warning of the consequences of an Obama presidency, are Jeremiah-like in their pessimism about the future.

Let me be clear: my opinion is that Obama would be a disastrous president, but for a variety of reasons I think the consequences will fall somewhat short of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.

But more important is the attitude we choose. As it is said, we can't always control our circumstances in life, but we can control our reactions to those circumstances. Tomorrow morning it is likely that we will have a elected what I believe will be a president in the mold of Jimmy Carter or Lyndon Johnson. That won't be change that I can believe in.

But you know what will also will be true? Tomorrow morning the sun will rise, my wife and I will drink a quiet cup of coffee and then drive the kids to school, we'll do our best with our business, I'll try to write some pages for my book, we'll rake some of the fall leaves off the yard, I'll go for a trail run in the afternoon. Later, I'll head downtown for some client meetings and then drop by our church to meet some college students that I'm mentoring. Life will go on. I will be thankful for another day in this amazing world, another day with those I love, another opportunity to be purposeful and productive. If Jeremiah could talk about the mercies of the Lord being new every morning then so can I.

And so should you.