The pledge with a date on it

One · What happened

A war, a blockade and a date on the calendar

Trump posted on Truth Social late on 8 October. “We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” he wrote, according to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera reported that the war began on 28 February with strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel. A ceasefire brokered in Islamabad followed on 8 April.

Deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly repeated the pledge on Tuesday 20 October, Fox News reported. The United States “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections,” she said. She added that the blockade “will remain in full force and effect.” In Tehran, President Masoud Pezeshkian told Field Marshal Asim Munir, “Before any negotiations, they must first end the pressure and threats and lift sanctions.” Iran’s security council secretary, Mohsen Rezaei, wrote on X that “Not a single gram of enriched uranium will be removed from Iran.” He added, “There will be no negotiations until the United States takes steps to build trust.”

According to Al Jazeera, Pakistan’s army chief had reached Tehran that evening on his fifth visit since the April ceasefire. Qatar has been carrying proposals between Washington and Tehran, according to Fox News, though neither government has confirmed that talks are under way. Al Jazeera added that another American aircraft carrier is expected in the region by late November. Serious people on every side argue over the strikes and over what Iran owes in return. The reader has no vote in either argument. He does have a reaction to a date, and it starts forming before he reaches the end of the sentence.

Two · What it is doing

The days a reader starts counting

The words “prior to the midterm elections” send a reader to arithmetic. A man with a daughter on a ship in the Gulf sees about two weeks ahead of him and feels his shoulders drop. A woman with cousins in Tehran sees the same two weeks and feels hers tighten. Each is resting on a promise about days that neither of them owns.

Then the reader supplies a motive for the date. One reader hears a government keeping its word to a country tired of the war, and another hears a campaign schedule. Neither of the statements says which of the two it was. The reader fills the gap with what he already believed and holds the guess as though he had read it in the text.

Contempt arrives close behind the guess on either side. The reader who heard a campaign schedule despises whoever would time a war around an election. The one who heard patience despises the people who heard a schedule. Iran’s leaders are sorted in a similar fashion, with “no negotiations” taken as principle by one reader and as stubbornness by another.

Under the contempt sits a tiredness from months of war news. The war is nearly eight months old. Someone who has followed it since February has learned to go numb at the headlines, and then a date wakes him. His dread moves from the war itself to the morning of 4 November, when the pledge runs out.

Three · Where the ground is

Matthew 24, and who owns the days

The disciples came to Jesus privately on the Mount of Olives and asked when the temple would fall and what would mark the end. His first words were a warning against being led astray. Then He said, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet” (Matthew 24:6). Jesus told the disciples what to do with their hearts when the reports came.

“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring,” Solomon wrote (Proverbs 27:1). Neither the White House nor the government in Tehran owns the days between now and 3 November, and the verse covers both of them. The verse covers a reader who is relieved and a reader who is suspicious. Whoever rests his weight on a date has put it on something that was never his to hold.

The horse and the victory

“The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31). Solomon did not tell anybody to stop readying horses. A carrier on its way to the Gulf is a horse in his sense, and the verse sets the outcome somewhere no hull can reach. The proverb does not say whose army the LORD will favor. Whoever hears it as a promise to his own country has changed the verse.

The peace Jesus gave

Jesus said to the eleven on the night before the cross, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). Within hours He would be arrested and the eleven would scatter. Before the night was over He told them that He had “overcome the world” (John 16:33). The peace He gave rests on a man who walked from that room to a cross and then out of a tomb that had held Him for three days.

“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” James asked (James 4:1). He was writing to a congregation whose members were fighting each other. A reader who has spent a week hating a president or a foreign minister has a small war in his own chest. Paul handed the Christians in Rome the part that was theirs to do, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).

Somebody in the pew has a son or daughter in uniform, and somebody else has relatives in Iran or in Israel. Each hears the story differently from the people around them. Paul told the Thessalonians, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Their pastor and the people in the pews can pray for them by name.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Five small jobs fit inside the days before 3 November.

1. 01

   Give the children two sentences.

   Tell them what the reporting says, that the American government has promised not to attack Iran before 3 November. Then say you do not know what happens after that date and that nobody at the table does. Add that God knows the days and that you will pray about them together, because David wrote, “My times are in your hand” (Psalm 31:15).

2. 02

   Ask a neighbor from the region about his family.

   Find a coworker or a member of your congregation with relatives in Iran or Israel. Ask how his family is and stay for the whole answer while the war and the politics stay out of the question. After the lawyer in Luke 10 named the man who showed mercy, Jesus told him, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

3. 03

   Write down the reason you gave for the date.

   Put on a card the motive you supplied when you first heard the pledge. Under it write that you do not know whether the motive is real, because the LORD says, “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind” (Jeremiah 17:10). Take the card to Him in prayer and tear it up when you finish.

4. 04

   Ask your pastor to pray for the church in Iran.

   Mention it to him before Sunday so it can go into the pastoral prayer. Christians live in Iran and in Israel, in the same cities the news names. Paul asked the Ephesians to keep “making supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18), a request he made of every believer in that congregation.

5. 05

   Pray the Lord’s Prayer each morning through 3 November.

   Matthew 6:9–13 asks for daily bread. The prayer also asks, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” It names no government and no army. Start before the phone comes out of your pocket.