Aunt Frankie says if you visit with people long enough, every conversation ends up in the bathroom. She must be right, because our entire nation ended up there this weekend.

Who uses which bathroom, and who has the right to make that decision are suddenly complex problems in our nation. Although I would think world hunger, the national debt, people blowing other people to bits, and the crime rate in our cities might be slightly higher on the to-do list for our elected officials.

But, what do I know?

I know this: Someone even bigger than our government is in control of how things ultimately work out in this world. I don’t know if bathrooms are on His list. But I know He has all the answers. For instance, consider Cyrus . . .

A prophet named Isaiah first mentioned Cyrus back in about 700 b.c.. Isaiah told the people living in Jerusalem that God had called a man named Cyrus to rescue them from their captivity, bring them out of exile, and restore them back to their own land, nation, and place of worship.

Imagine that. The prophet dared to list the man by name. As if he were predicting the next presidential election. Or, more accurately, as if he were predicting the presidential election of 2116. Because, he wrote these words nearly one-hundred years before anyone in Jerusalem had been taken captive to Babylon.

Isaiah told his readers a man named Cyrus was going to fix a problem that would not even happen for more than one hundred years.

It worked exactly that way, of course. After Isaiah and most of the people alive when he was writing had died, Babylon invaded. Jerusalem fell. People suffered in exile for decades. But, eventually, a baby named Cyrus was born. When he grew up and became king, he let the people go.

When I was trying to learn a little more about this Persian king, I came across the most wonderful quote from a scholar. This one comforts me in the light of who may or may not be president next year and how we are going to choose bathrooms next week:

Rich princes do what poor prophets have foretold. Matthew Henry

That’s the way it has always been with God, Dear Reader. He isn’t just a step ahead of whatever mess we are in today, nationally or personally. He is in control.

God has ordered the solution to our problems since long before Cyrus was born. We can count on that no matter where the national conversation takes us.