Some time ago, our beloved local pastor shared this ancient Chinese fable:
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.”
The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!”
The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and he was thrown off and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to draft people into the army, and they rejected the farmer’s son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
[Accessed here, with credit to Alan Watts for the English phrasing.]
The lesson of this story is that we will not know whether something is good or bad until the conclusion of the entire series of events it sets in motion, a chain of events that may continue on beyond our own lifetimes. As Christians, we know that God can bring good out of bad—indeed, we are promised that “all things work together for good to them who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose”—and that sometimes things we thought were really good turn out to have been bad.
Life often has twists and turns that we did not foresee and, in hindsight, we can bless and be grateful for what seemed to be, when it happened, a terrible event. Moreover, we may come to regret choices made that seemed so right when we made them.
So it is with this past election. Those of us who voted for Donald Trump may be thankful now, but none of us really knows what his presidency will bring. We must pray mightily that he asks to be divinely guided, and that this prayer will be answered.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Democrats, while in office, were ruthless in their abuse of power, and especially in their burning hatred of Donald Trump. The voters, however, saw through the “lawfare” narrative; they “voted the bums out.” Trump won an electoral college landslide, 312 to 226, and won the popular vote by about 2.3 million voters, 77.3 million to 75 million.
And yet. In all of our enthusiasm for having won a decisive victory, those of us on the right need to recall that there are millions of decent fellow Americans—some of them our friends and family—who are in pain and deep anxiety over this, and that their pain would be our pain had they won and we lost. The Bible says,
“Do not rejoice and gloat when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles, Or the LORD will see your gloating and be displeased, And turn His anger away from your enemy. Proverbs 24:17-18 (Amplified Bible).
In trying to model Christ, we must try to understand the feelings even of those we disagree with, and empathize with them. Sometimes I feel anxiety over our country’s future, even with the new administration in charge. Then, I think how much more anxiety I would have if my side had lost, and I realize that that is how the other side is feeling now. Read their social media posts. Some of them are terrified. Maybe their fear is baseless, but they look to the future with an awful foreboding. The least we can do is recognize this, and treat them with the (non-patronizing) sensitivity and understanding we would appreciate were the tables turned.
History will judge Donald Trump’s second term as president. We need not approve of, much less try to defend, his every action and statement, including his occasional unkindness and his more than occasional boasting. We must remember whose children we are, that we are in this life together, and that God will make the ultimate judgement—including upon us.
“Let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 9:24 (NIV).
May God help us always to be conscious of our limitations and the weakness of our finite understanding, as well as the need to listen and learn and be kind, and in humility recognize that we may turn out to be wrong.
Janine Colburn is a retired RN and freelance writer who lives with her husband, Keith, in Loma Linda, California. She is editor of The C. S. Lewis Index, La Sierra Univ. Press (1995), Crossway Books (1998).
