Happy 2024!

The holidays are done, the partying’s over, and reality returns with a vengence.

We’re again in a presidential election year, and the consequences somehow feel even more dire than the last one, no matter who ends up winning.

One of the reasons for that is that a substantial part of the population feels as though the election was stolen, and that their vote didn’t count. That’s a feeling that hurts deeply. In the final analysis, though, either one or the other viewpoint is the truth, i.e., if there were ballot irregularities, they either would’ve made a difference in the outcome or they wouldn’t.

My prayer this week is that, as Christians, we will want to know the truth with all our hearts, because as Jesus said, “the truth will make you free.” And if it makes us individually free, then it stands to reason it makes us collectively free as well.

There are 3 verses I find particularly compelling:

John 8:32 “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

• The second is John 17:17:
  “Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth.”
• The last is John 14:6:
  6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is the truth, and He gives Christians His Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth. This week I pray that I will be sincere in my desire to know the truth. I pray that I will want to know it, even if it goes against what I believe to be the truth now. That’s hard, but I need to open myself up to that. I need to open myself up to others’ viewpoints that differ from mine. I can’t really do God’s will if I’m believing and spreading untruth, even if inadvertently.

We as Christians need to unite around the fact that Jesus is the truth, and our mission is also to know the truth. Therefore, please join me in this prayer.
God help me to want to know the truth with all of my being, as well as to actually know the truth, that I may be free. Amen. Please pray it daily.