Happy short-week Wednesday, my friends. I suggest you start saving room today for pumpkin pie with whipped cream tomorrow.

One of the things that always helps me from spiraling in the face of significant challenges is remembering that my temporal life is just a short speck in the eye of eternity. Even for those of you who don’t believe in an afterlife, you have to admit that a life here on earth is relatively “nasty, brutish and short,” as Hobbes wrote in his 1651 work, Leviathan.

While Scripture suggests our years are seventy or eighty “if we have the strength” (Psalm 90:10), it also calls us to keep a sense of proportion about whatever we’re facing.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

Hebrews 12:4

While those passages speak specifically about our life as Christians, it is also true that God uses ordinary circumstances in our lives as human beings to develop Christ in us.

So when we face great disappointment in our political processes, for example, and the outcome is not what we prefer, and our brethren on the other side of the political aisle are cheering the result, and we cannot for the life of us understand their perspective and wonder how long it will be before we’re all hauled before the local magistrate to give an account of our voting choices, it is helpful to remind ourselves that these, too, are “light and momentary troubles” that refine our faith.

I’m not saying that they don’t matter or that we shouldn’t be concerned with our political processes. Not at all. To participate responsibly in government with your vote, at a minimum, is a civic duty.

What I’m saying is that in the eye of eternity, who wins the US election in 2020 is insignificant. It remains insignificant even if you add in all of the ripple effects of this election for generations to come. Our levels of comfort and wealth may rise or fall as a result in the short term but in the long, long term? It won’t matter.

Still, even with that perspective, I can’t deny that I feel an enormous sadness over the deterioration of our country. For all his faults, Donald J. Trump had corrected our misguided drift and set us on a new course of renewal. Should Joe Biden take office in January, most of that progress will be not only reversed, but shredded, boxed, and buried with a 3-foot-thick slab of concrete laid on top it. And I can guarantee there will be no interference from the Deep State, fake news media, Democrats or, sadly, even Republicans. It will be back to business as usual—and worse.

But that, too, is a light and momentary trouble in the larger scheme of things for those who hope in Christ. It may not be fun, it may get ugly and dangerous but, in the end, we’re as a blade of grass that is here today and gone tomorrow (Luke 12:28).

No matter what happens in the next few months (or the next few years!), we all need to keep a sense of proportion about it. Do what we can in the here and now, yes, but remember that what counts in the long run is the Ultimate Authority.