What an exciting election day here in Virginia! It was so enjoyable to serve as a poll-watcher helping these Republican candidates. Lots of very good conversations, including with some who have come to see the error of their vote for Biden.
The following is what I said the morning after on my Facebook page, on which most of my nearly 600 "friends" are from my home state of Vermont, where I won two terms to serve in the Vermont Senate in a far-left district—and not during red waves, but during massive blue waves. (The impossible is really not impossible!)
Ten years ago, as our oldest son was going into high school, we moved from Vermont to have a safer place to raise our four sons and we selected the Lynchburg, Virginia, area. We had seen too many children of our friends and family embrace the empty and dangerous pagan ideas so prevalent in Vermont.
In a sense these young people had abandoned the true meaning of pursuing happiness that Jefferson penned as a fundamental human right. They had buried their yearning for truth and the creative nature that we humans uniquely have because of being created in the image of our Creator.
Indeed so many Americans now live ameaningless lives, as though we simply evolved from animals. How foolish to willfully give up the magnificence of humanity for the mundane life of an animal—but people will become what they learn, no matter how wrong-headed the ideas might be.
Our Move
So in moving here, we tried to select a locale where it is generally understood that man was indeed created uniquely human, with a creative nature and the ability to discern right from wrong and to choose right from wrong. The concept of a fallen world that struggles against a pull toward evil and is in need of a redeemer was also generally embraced.
These were ideas that we’d seen increasingly pushed out of sight and thought in Vermont—and the willful choice to be ignorant of the reality of creation and the God of creation has had devastating consequences in Vermont, as it has everywhere else that has slid down that road of error.
Ten years later Rebecca and I have no regrets. It was a costly move. Neither of us had jobs or work here waiting for us. I restarted my engineering business, finding new customers in our new home and that took a bit to get steady.
But this year we doubled our capacity when our oldest son, who also has an electrical engineering degree and a couple years experience in the same line if work as me, joined our small business. God has always been the sales department and we are very blessed with work for both of us.
Today, with the victory of all Republican candidates on my Virginia ballot, is a very special day. One of the attractive things about Virginia as compared to Vermont was that our vote could make a real difference. It would not be simply drowned out by a wave of votes from voters who have no reason for real hope and so place their hope in the ever-disappointing government.
The war between hope and hopelessness is very present in Virginia, but this time hope won, and we must give thanks to our sovereign God for this victory. Yet we cannot rest in this victory or it will be short-lived.
Reason for Hope
Those of us who embrace a world where there is reason for hope must share that reason for hope in our sphere. We must expose the faulty ideas that have seduced so many in our nation and threaten its future as a beacon of light for the nations.
The dark days of 2021 in America, amidst this war against our founding principles by those controlling the highest levers of government, have stirred a sense of despair not only in our nation, but all around the globe.
The best thing you and I can do for any people in any country is to put all we have into getting our nation back on a foundation that embraces the laws of nature and nature's God.
This is a task that can only be accomplished by human-to-human relationships. That is the calling of the church. We must not hold the truths of God captive in our church buildings, but rather we must answer the call to take those truths, with confidence, into the marketplace of ideas.
Big tech cannot censor face-to-face conversations. Liberty cannot be forced, but it can and must be shared or it will die.
May God Bless America, in spite of so much of our nation willfully and foolishly rejecting Him. God is real and is sovereign, holy and loving toward His creation. There is no higher calling than to know God better and to glorify him as the awesome creator God He is.
Mark Shepard formerly served in the Vermont Senate. He now lives in rural Virginia.
Contact: Mark@MarkShepard.us