The Election Results: We are not enemies. We are Americans.

While a clear winner of the presidential race wasn’t announced until Saturday, one thing was painfully clear during Election Week:

The United States of America is not at all united.

When it comes to politics, the country is so divided, it’s nearly split down the middle.

What unites us? Let’s return for a moment to what that is, not who won or who lost, but who we are as a people.

We are a people who built our lives and hopes on the same Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

A love for freedom. A love for justice. A love for peace.

The details, that’s where it can get complicated and messy and painful.

One thing we can all celebrate is that some 158 million Americans voted, the highest turnout since 1900.

That alone should cause us to cheer. We have the right to vote. We used the right to vote. And no one attacked our country on Election Day to stop us from using that right to vote.

President Elect Joe Biden gave us all something to think about when he said, “We are opponents, but we are not enemies.”

Surely he was inspired by Abraham Lincoln, who said in his first inaugural address:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Passions on the right and left have strained us all, but the better angels of our nature can still reach us.

We can each tap into those gifts that come from God to each of us and to all of us equally: Wisdom. Understanding. Counsel. Courage. Clarity. Patience. Faith. Hope. Charity. Love. Compassion.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln offered these words to heal the nation:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

It’s a fitting job description for every American.

Let’s get to work.