Psalm 29:1-11
Honor the Lord, you heavenly beings; honor the Lord for his glory and strength. Honor the Lord for the glory of his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea. The God of glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty sea. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars; the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon’s mountains skip like a calf; he makes Mount Hermon leap like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning. The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forests bare. In his Temple everyone shouts, “Glory!” The Lord rules over the floodwaters. The Lord reigns as king forever. The Lord gives his people strength. The Lord blesses them with peace.
The last thing in the
world I would ever do is intentionally kick a hornet’s nest. The key word is intentionally. I did that once
with yellow jackets nesting in a dead, hollow branch of an oak tree. I was a teenager, helping my Dad in the
yard. The dead limb was huge and hanging
over where my brother parked his car. The
little black and yellow dive demons objected to my sawing off the limb that
contained their living quarters. They
were VERY unhappy; I spent 2 days in the hospital.
The whole point here is
that you do not poke what can poke back much harder than you can take. If you read David’s psalm objectively, the
characterizations of God’s power are bigger than any poke you can handle. Consider:
·
God’s glory thunders over the sea (which is pretty thunderous itself)
·
God’s answers split the gigantic cedars like twigs
·
God’s power makes the mountains shudder and jump like young oxen
In short, who would
want to mess with a God like that?
Yet, it is common in
our day to see the cavalier arrogance many people have about God. That kind of thinking survives only so long as
God’s patience. If you have ever watched
a petulant child get angry at his parent, you get this idea. The child isn’t getting what he wants, so he threatens
to run away, or tries to hit the parent.
The parent responds with a smile, or a shrug, or a calm rebuke. The child ramps up his onslaught, louder,
angrier, promising the parent will be sorry.
He’s pushing the envelope, and doesn’t understand that with which he’s
trifling. His parent’s patience is about
to result in something akin to what I experienced in that oak tree…more than
you ever bargained-for.
This is a picture of
God, our Creator, and the petulance of humans who refuse to even acknowledge
the Sovereign of the universe. God’s
patience is incredible (more so than mine).
But God’s patience is not limitless.
He allows us much freedom to find our way, but, we are ultimately responsible
to come to Him on bended knee:
Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11
Let’s Pray Together:
Father, your Word is
clear; our responsibility is to choose to love you with all our hearts, minds,
soul, and strength. And when we do that,
our hearts find peace. Help us today to
choose well.
For You Today
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today. Have a blessed day!
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