I have accepted that Donald Trump is now the president-elect and will be president in January. I have accepted that almost half of the voters selected someone whose campaign was largely pandering, falsehoods and name calling. I have accepted that my side lost this time.

It’s time to move on. And I got delivered a message last week on how to do it.

Linda was reading a novel in which the hero is teaching a Bible study to a group of adults not necessarily religious. He was telling the story of Stephen. She and I discussed the novel for a few minutes, and three days later it finally occurred to me that there was a message there.

Stephen, in case you quit going to Sunday School before they got to the Acts of the Apostles, was a minor figure who became a major figure. The first time we hear about him is Acts 6, when he was one of seven elected to make certain that the distribution of food was equitable. There had been complaints that the Hellenists were being discriminated against by the Hebrews. They were all Jews, but from different places.

The other six (Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus) went about their business of serving the congregation, but Stephen’s story goes on.

He went out into the community, preaching and performing miracles. Predictably, some leaders of the local religious institutions objected to that and had him arrested. He was then taken before the high priest. (There is a strange line here that says while they were piling crime upon crime on Stephen, they looked intently at him, and “his face appeared to them like the face of an angel.” But that didn’t stop them from accusing, then trying him.)

Stephen then delivers a sermon that traces the history of Jewish people from Abraham to the moment Stephen was speaking to them, pointing out that the religious establishment had missed the point at almost every opportunity. Then he accused his accusers of not keeping the very law they were supposed to protect.

They didn’t like that.

So comes the most famous scene in the story, the one that the Rembrandt and others painted: Stephen surrounded by an angry mob looking up and seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of God, waiting to welcome him.

Here the Bible is very specific. Stephen stands there while they throw stones at him, then he kneels down. He stands there until he chooses to kneel.

The last part of the story is Stephen saying, “Lord, do not hold this against them.” And with these words he fell asleep.

He didn’t scream. He didn't beg. He “fell asleep,” secure in his knowledge that Jesus was waiting for him.

So what does this have to do with the election?

I’ve decided to take a page out of Stephen’s book. I’m not going to protest Donald Trump’s presidency, or his existence. Like the Jews, our country has made some bad decisions and lived through them, and I hope we’ll live through this one. Instead, like Stephen, I’m going to try to do some good works. It probably won’t make a lot of difference, but I imagine Stephen thought the same thing when they elected him waiter.

I’m also not going to worry about easy symbolic gestures. Years ago, there were bumper stickers that said “Honk if you love Jesus.” Now there are Facebook memes that have variations of the same thing, and they are just as useless. These gestures, and much of what goes on in our churches are the equivalent of what the religious of his time did in revering the Law and ignoring the God behind it. Instead of spending my time sharing a meme that says, “If you believe Jesus is with you today, type Amen,” I’m going to try to do something to show that to somebody, even if it’s just a smile and a greeting.

And I hope I have just a little of Stephen’s courage when I encounter those who would make some of our citizens less than others. Stephen stood there while they threw rocks at him. Then he knelt when he chose to kneel. That picture of him standing in the face of more difficulty than I'll ever see will be my example.

There’s been a lot of hate spilled on our country in the last 18-months, and it’s going to take a lot of strength to overcome it. 

Evidently Stephen wasn’t easy to get along with. He could have told the high priest that these folks must have misunderstood him. Could have been a language problem. The high priest would have probably told him to be more careful in his speeches and sent him on his way.

But then we would have lost a valuable lesson that may be particularly applicable to this day, to us individually and to our nation as a community: that, despite the desperation of the moment, there is a constant future ahead of us.

In the end, all of us will, like Stephen, fall asleep.