I do not know why we lost.
I do not know why the wicked so often seem to win.
I do not understand why the world rewards what it rewards—or why truth, courage, faithfulness, and purity are so often rejected.

But God does.

Ecclesiastes did not offer me easy answers this morning...
It tells us plainly that much of life is beyond human understanding:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time… no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”
—Ecclesiastes 3:11

God sees and knows the beginning and the end at the same time.
We do not.

We see one moment.
One result.
One loss.

God sees the whole story.

And He makes everything beautiful—not necessarily immediately, and not always in the way we expected—but in its time.

His time.

Nothing New Under the Sun

What happened in Mark Lynch’s campaign against Lindsey Graham is deeply personal to me.
I was not watching from a distance.
I worked with Mark.
I learned from him. I believed in him. I prayed for him.
I championed his campaign.
I was inside the story.
EVIL seemed to triumph.

And yet Ecclesiastes reminds us:

“There is nothing new under the sun.”
—Ecclesiastes 1:9

“The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.”
—Ecclesiastes 1:6

Truth has been rejected before.
Power has protected itself before.
The righteous have been opposed before.
Good men have stood, spoken, sacrificed—and watched the world choose something else.

Around and around it goes.
The same hunger for power.
The same resistance to truth.
The same conflict between light and darkness.

Nothing new.

Only this time, I had been placed inside the ancient, storied pattern.
And strangely, there is comfort in that.
God already knows this story.
God wrote beyond the page I can see.

He knows every heart, every hidden action, every prayer, every sacrifice, every mile traveled, every word spoken, and every seed planted.

Nothing was hidden from Him.
Nothing was forgotten.

Wisdom Cannot Explain Everything

Solomon knew more than almost anyone who had come before him.

He wrote:

“I communed with my heart, saying, ‘Look, I have attained greatness, and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge.’”
—Ecclesiastes 1:16

Solomon had wisdom, knowledge, power, wealth, and experience.

He applied himself to understand not only wisdom, but also madness and folly.

“I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind.”
—Ecclesiastes 1:17

He searched for explanations.
He examined everything under the sun.
But even Solomon discovered that human understanding has a limit.

There are mysteries we cannot solve.
There are outcomes we cannot explain.
There are questions that wisdom alone cannot answer.

Many of life’s deepest mysteries are simply beyond human understanding.
And knowledge alone cannot provide peace.

We can imagine peace will come when we finally understand why.

Why did this happen?
Why did God allow it?
Why was truth rejected?
Why did the faithful lose?
Why did the world choose as it did?

But knowing every answer would not necessarily heal the heart.

We cannot know everything.
But we know the One who does.

Knowing the answers is not the answer.
Knowing God is the answer.

The Campaign Was Not the Whole Story

Mark Lynch is a true man of God.

I have been blessed to the overflow to have worked with him, learned from him, prayed beside him, and championed his campaign for the United States Senate against Lindsey Graham.

I watched Mark stand when standing was costly.

I watched him speak the name of Jesus Christ without apology.

I watched him place faith above political calculation.

I watched him remain true to who he was and to the God he served.

At the very end, after all that evil that had been levied against Mark and against those of us who stood with him, his closing statement was not about himself.

It was not about votes.
It was not about power.
It was not about position.

He said:

“We have spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ across the entire state for fifteen months.”

That was his closing statement.
That was his answer to the darkness.
That was his declaration of victory.
And I am better for having participated in these months.... working with a husband and wife who evidence that they have built their life on The Rock of the Lord.

The campaign may have been the vehicle.
But the Gospel was the mission.

For fifteen months, the name of Jesus Christ was spoken across South Carolina.
Seeds were planted.
Prayers were prayed.
Truth was declared.
People were called to courage.

People saw a man refuse to hide his faith merely to make himself more acceptable to the world.
At times, it felt as though the world—or at least this state—could not hold such purity.
But rejection does not make purity less pure.
Truth does not become false because people refuse to receive it.
Obedience does not become failure because the visible outcome was not what we prayed for.

God Knows the Whole

Ecclesiastes tells us that the race is not always won by the swift, nor the battle by the strong.
I had to read it again this morning. 
And again.

The wisest person is not always heard.
The righteous person is not always rewarded under the sun.
But God sees beyond what happens under the sun.
God sees and knows what was accomplished in the eternal.

I do not know why we lost.

I may never fully understand why South Carolina "seemed to chose" Lindsey Graham over Mark Lynch.

But I know that Mark was faithful.
I know the Gospel was proclaimed.
I know God saw every act of obedience.
And I know that no work done for Him is empty.
There is a time for every purpose under heaven.
There was a time to begin.

A time to travel.

A time to speak.

A time to pray.

A time to stand.

A time to fight.

And then there came a time to release the outcome into the hands of God.

The season ended.
The purpose did not.
We cannot see the work of God from beginning to end.

But we know the God who can.
Knowing every answer is not what gives us peace.
Knowing God is what gives us meaning and peace.

And because God saw every prayer, every mile, every sacrifice, every act of courage, every seed planted, and every word spoken for Jesus Christ — Nothing was wasted. Nothing was meaningless.

Everything matters.