Posted November 02, 2026
In light of tomorrow’s midterm elections, many are wondering what comes next. The Wall Street Journal reports that the US has told several Gulf Arab countries to be prepared for a short, intense military campaign after the elections. Stocks were down significantly last Friday but could rally after the elections, while the election results will definitely affect the last two years of the Trump Administration and the next congressional session.
Some are worried that dire threats could be on the horizon, fears fueled by news that the UK launched its “Be Ready” campaign on October 22, encouraging households to stockpile three days of drinking water, nonperishable food, cash, and other emergency essentials. Closer to home, the Pentagon is preparing US bases to keep operating for at least ninety days without outside support.
The British effort is the first stage of a three-year campaign to help households be prepared “if everyday services are temporarily disrupted” through “events such as severe weather.” The Pentagon, by contrast, is preparing for the possibility of a major war that could cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains, and threaten critical infrastructure.
Whatever happens tomorrow, at least you “gained” an hour of time yesterday (unless you live in Hawaii, or the part of Arizona not inhabited by the Navajo Nation, or Puerto Rico, Guam, or the Virgin Islands). You can thank (or blame) Congress, which decreed that we would move our clocks forward one hour on the second Sunday in March and then move them back on the first Sunday in November, both at 2:00 am local time.
We humans are fond of imposing our will and preferences on nature in this way. We name everything we can, from stars in the sky to insects in the ground. We devise names or numbers for each year, season, month, day, hour, minute, and second. This is motivated in part by pragmatism: it’s hard to watch my grandson play Little League baseball if I don’t know what “day” and “time” his game begins.
But it’s also an expression of our will to power. I’m not sure why I feel more empowered by knowing the name we have arbitrarily assigned to a tree, flower, or star, but I do. Except for pets we train to respond to the sounds we speak that constitute their “name,” the rest of nature doesn’t seem to notice. It does what it does apart from our attempts to name and thus control it.
This is because the universe already has a Controller. Toward the end of the first century, Pope St. Clement I described God’s work in our world:
The heavens, revolving under his government, are subject to him in peace. Day and night run the course appointed by him, in no wise hindering each other. The sun and moon, with the companies of the stars, roll on in harmony according to his command, within their prescribed limits, and without any deviation. The fruitful earth, according to his will, brings forth food in abundance, at the proper seasons, for man and beast and all the living beings upon it, never hesitating, nor changing any of the ordinances which he has fixed. . . .
The seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter peacefully give place to one another. The winds in their several quarters fulfill, at the proper time, their service without hindrance. . . . All these the great Creator and Lord of all has appointed to exist in peace and harmony.
A skeptic might reply that science now explains all of this without the need for a Creator. To this assertion, the theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner responds:
Science is the investigation of the physical universe and its ways, and consists largely of weighing, measuring, and putting things in test tubes. To assume that this kind of investigation can unearth solutions to all our problems is a form of religious faith whose bankruptcy has only in recent years started to become apparent.
Buechner explains:
The conflict between science and religion . . . is like the conflict between a podiatrist and a poet. One says that Susie Smith has fallen arches. The other says she walks in beauty like the night. In his own way each is speaking the truth. What is at issue is the kind of truth you’re after.
Our problems come when we pursue the wrong truth, naming and seeking to control God’s creation as a means to being our own god. God’s people are not exempt, as the Lord lamented: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). This is “vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:17).
David therefore prayed, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). And Jesus later announced, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37–38).
He assured the Samaritan woman beside Jacob’s well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14).
Now we must choose between the “broken cisterns” we make for ourselves and the “spring of water” the living Lord Jesus gives to all who submit their lives fully to him. Whatever our fears about the future, Hannah Whitall Smith was right:
“No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone.”
How fully will your soul be “at rest” today?
“Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.” —Karl Barth
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