At the time that I’m writing this edition of “Running on Faith,” we are still awaiting the results of this historic and tenuous national election. We may have a clear winner by the time you read it. But in an op-ed that appeared in Wednesday’s New York Times, entitled “Even Before a Winner, America Was the Loser,” Thomas L. Friedman notes that in this extremely close election, “there was no moral wave. There was no widespread rejection of the kind of leadership that divides us, especially in a pandemic. We are a country with multiple compound fractures, and so we simply cannot do anything ambitious anymore—like put a man on the moon—because ambitious things have to be done together.” He goes on to confess that while conversing with his daughters, he wanted so badly to tell them that “all is going to be okay,” that we’ve been through rough times—but he could not, in all honesty, tell them that with any confidence. And yet, he wants to still believe that “the better angels of our nature are still out there.”

Are “the better angels of our nature still out there?” If you read Friedman’s full op-ed, the better angels may be hard to find. But do we believe that? What about the faith we profess? Will our faith call forth the better angels of our nature? I believe that it will.

A line from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians gives us a way forward. Writing from prison and calling for unity and humility in a time of crisis and struggle, Paul urges the Christian community that “[they] are children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom [they] shine like lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15). This ought to shape how we might receive the news announcing the President of the United States, and, how we will conduct ourselves in our interactions over the days ahead with our families, colleagues, neighbors and friends—whether or not we feel like winners or losers on the other side of the election.

So what does that look like? Of all the media I have consumed throughout this season, I found a recent Instagram post from American writer and film director, Spike Lee, to be especially inspiring to me as a person of faith. It’s an image of Lee, masked and kneeling on a city street, with his hands folded and eyes raised to Heaven, and the caption: “Dear God, I ask you to please deliver Peace, Righteousness and Truth. God Bless da USA.” We Christians, who bear the name and loving presence of Christ in the world, are called at this precise moment to reach out to those who are hurting, afraid or struggling—and to pray—remembering Who we represent and in Whose hands rests our world and every single human person. Lest we give into the prevailing malaise, exhaustion, anger and anxiety that have marked these times and allow it to be an excuse for not allowing the better angels of our nature prevail, let us commit to praying and working for peace, righteousness and truth; let us work for healing and be, as St. Paul says in Romans 5:5, a “hope that does not disappoint”—things that our nation so desperately needs at this critical moment in her history.