Tuesday, July 2, 2019
We thank you, O God! We give thanks because you are near. People everywhere tell of your wonderful deeds. God says, “At the time I have planned, I will bring justice against the wicked. When the earth quakes and its people live in turmoil, I am the one who keeps its foundations firm. Interlude
“I warned the proud, ‘Stop your boasting!’ I told the wicked, ‘Don’t raise your fists! Don’t raise your fists in defiance at the heavens or speak with such arrogance.’” For no one on earth—from east or west, or even from the wilderness—should raise a defiant fist. It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall. For the Lord holds a cup in his hand that is full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours out the wine in judgment, and all the wicked must drink it, draining it to the dregs. But as for me, I will always proclaim what God has done; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. For God says, “I will break the strength of the wicked, but I will increase the power of the godly.” Psalm 75:1-10
Twice in
my life I have stood near the great Niagara and Horseshoe Falls at the New York/Canada
border. The first time, as a young boy,
when Mom and Dad took my brother and me to see this fantastic place, the sense
of overwhelming power, enforced by the roaring river crashing over the precipice,
thundering its way to the rocks below just shut my mouth altogether. It is stunning to take-in the ominous –
almost eerie – sight and sounds. There
is something quite holy about that kind of brute dynamism.
The second
time, as a young family man, I took my children to see what I had seen. This time I was more prepared to take it in;
I could see more. I could take-in the
facts of man harnessing the awesome power God placed in the movement of his
water over the falls. I could understand
the caution of the captain of the Maid-of-the-Mist on the river below, carrying
her passengers draped in raincoats close (but not too
close) to where that water crashed to the earth after a 167-foot drop from above. And I could see the gentle misty spray rising
from the rocks below, with the sun shining through that haze to form a perfect
rainbow above and alongside the falls. I
could make the connection of that rainbow with God’s promise to Noah, that God’s
judgment would never-again come by a worldwide flood.
The fact
that the Creator of all we see holds such places of incomparable strength and
power as one of us might hold a feather, sparks the imagination to places
unknown when it comes to the depth and breadth of His powerful will. If JHWH created the universe with just the
words let there be…what more has he done? (And what, if it
pleased Him, might He undo?).
Dare we
even say it? Reverence for Almighty God,
and attention to His word and will, are more than the constraint of His law on
our lives, it is the only sensible thing we created creatures can do. And yet some people, (perhaps more people than
not these days) find it fashionable, cool, or just arrogantly independent to raise
a fist towards the heavens and, in their self-proclaimed wisdom defy what they
assume does not exist; in the all-too-familiar contradictory nature of atheism they
rail against their assumption of an absence of anything greater than themselves.
For You Today
With all the forces that rock the earth and culture in which we live,
each of us who lives as children of God, friends of Jesus, indwelt by the Comforter,
must keep that second look at the promises of the rainbow. We must be ready to proclaim as did the
Psalmist the words of He whom we serve:
When the earth quakes and its people live in turmoil, I am the one who keeps its foundations firm.
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Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture
quotations are from The
New Living Translation©
