Well I thought that the rain would cool things down, but it looks like it don’t. I’d like to get you to change your mind, but it looks like you won’t. — Bob Dylan, Seeing the Real You at Last

Dang. Fall, 2016, kicked my sorry arse all over the place. Literally.

With my ignorant medical problems, I could not really get involved in all the hand-waving and hand-wringing that went along with election 2016. November 7 was just another kick in the pants, but I thought at least things would settle down after that. Looks like they won’t.

And the driver of all this hysteria? Fear.

Well, I was sorry when my conservative friends were apoplectic that the female Stalin in pantsuits was sure to ruin our nation. But I just couldn’t be afraid.

And I’m sorry that my liberal friends are being driven out of their minds by the thought of orange-skinned Voldemort in the White House. But I just can’t be afraid.

Maybe it’s because I’m a happy idiot, although I prefer to think it’s because my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ love and righteousness. (Maybe in fact, those two are the same thing.)

Either way, it is a peaceful place to be. Why not join me on the happy idiot side?

Refuse to let them scare you.

“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that Day,” said the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 1:12, and he surely must have felt as though he were facing the end of the world … beaten, imprisoned, persecuted, awaiting execution.

If he could opt out of fear, surely we can.