EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on Nov. 8, 2024.
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
After all of the breathless headlines of two years of electioneering, you know where I saw the Holy Spirit in action during Tuesday's election?
It wasn’t in the names on the ballot by which I colored in a little bubble, though we want to find holy significance in the people we choose to elect.
No, rather, I saw the Holy Spirit active in ways that had nothing to do with the candidates, and it was divinely beautiful.
It began with a trip to our usual voting place, a church located a few blocks south of home, where we’ve been voting for years.
Imagine that! In a country where we still respect a healthy dose of separation of church and state, I marched in to cast my ballot in a holy house, and no one seems overly worked up about that. A place of worship and a civic duty peaceably commingling. I love that!
Inside the polling place, I encountered a gaggle of cheery election officials present to assist me in everything voting related. Those volunteers gave up their day so that I -- and hundreds of others -- would have a seamless voting experience. That is the Holy Spirit too.
Over lunch Tuesday, I was scheduled to deliver a presentation about our homeless shelter to a good, ol’-fashioned service club. The kind that helped build up communities before “service above self” became a thing of the past.
During the course of lunch, their business meeting and my presentation, we recited an oath that paid tribute to God, sang a table prayer and no one even blink when I used a gospel text in my slideshow.
Even more remarkable is the service club holds its weekly luncheons at our local school district’s administration building! And there is zero worry about recriminations for doing so. A 180-degree reverse of practicing government business on church grounds in the morning, there we were praising God on public ground with no hubbub.
You can’t tell me that the Holy Spirit wasn’t in action there.
Finally, I capped my evening at a gala for our city’s business association. An assembly of dressed up adults coming together to support an organization seeking that improves our community’s quality of life.
In two and a half hours of frivolity, never once did I hear a political discussion; I couldn’t have told you how a single person in that room voted. They were there for the fellowship and a good common cause. Judging by the joy I could feel all around me, I know that the Holy Spirit was present there as well.
Friends, may you too be able to look around you in the coming days and see the Holy Spirit in action. The Holy Spirit doesn’t stop working just because an election was held. We just often stop looking for the evidence. Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is the interim CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.
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