By Myrtle Virginia Thompson

It’s over. Thirteen months of wondering. The aspirants, the speeches, the confetti, the fireworks, the balloons — it was all a great display of what we hope and pray will be a change in our country if our prayers are answered and the promises made are kept.

The important thing to remember is that none of those things can happen unless this is the awakening our nation needs and for which many of us have prayed. We have asked for a return to sanity.

When our political system is in disarray, we all suffer consequences. You know the issues that should bother us, the rules and regulations imposed on us.

I saw some hope recently. It was not just Donald Trump. It was the family values. It was Mr. Pence, who openly confessed the order of his life: first a Christian, then a family man, then a political person.

Will a Christian solve all our problems? In this political arena, it will likely multiply them, because there is a spiritual battle going on today from which the Gospel is still free to guide us. I believe the whole world is in battle.

I am not political. I live in the realm like those after the time of Christ who became Christians. They did not look to Rome or any political power for their daily bread. Their mission was God-centered on the need to spread the Gospel.

They suffered for their faith, and they had to keep their eyes focused on another place. I want to do that.

There is a very interesting and, I think, comparable time in the Bible, with lessons for us today. The people of Israel had come through the battles of Joshua’s day. They had settled into the “good life,” much as we have.

After Joshua’s death, judges were appointed to rule over them. Samuel, the last judge, was old, and his sons had not followed in his godly footsteps. Israel had a dilemma.

The people wanted a king, so they could be “like the nations around them.”

The story in 1 Samuel 8 tells us what happened, and it was not good for the people of Israel.

Our youth do not always believe the lessons the old have learned — that we cannot always look to human leadership. We must seek God’s guidance for our nation, our leaders and our children who come behind us.

The chorus of a Gospel song I have come to love states: “O, may all who come behind us find us faithful, may the fire of our devotion light their way. May the footprints that we leave cause them to believe and the lives we live inspire them to obey. O, may all who come behind us find us faithful.”

That is what I desire and pray for today as I look to whatever God has for me, for my family, for our nation and for our world.

Myrtle Virginia Thompson is a Suffolk resident and former missionary. Email her at mvtgrt@gmail.com