Old Sandals

And who is like Your people Israel, the one nation on the earth whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people—to make for Yourself a name by great and awesome deeds, by driving out nations from before Your people whom You redeemed from Egypt?  For You have made Your people Israel Your very own people forever; and You, Lord, have become their God.

The Lord chose Abraham and his descendants out of all the people on the earth, to be their God, to redeem them and establish them as His people forever.

Was God playing favorites?  What about the other nations?  Surely God is the God of all flesh.  From Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things.

For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to the grave. I am counted with those who go down to the pit; I am like a man who has no strength, adrift among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You remember no more, and who are cut off from Your hand.

This psalm, of course, is inspired scripture, yet all these things are written from this psalmist’s perspective, and not from God’s perspective.

It is certainly not true that those who have died are remembered no more by the Lord, and are cut off from His hand. The presence of the Lord fills heaven and earth.

And of Zion it will be said, “This one and that one were born in her”.

As children of God, our foundation, our home, our desire is Zion, where God dwells, where His love, joy and peace permeate everything.

You have taken away all Your wrath; You have turned from the fierceness of Your anger. Restore us, O God of our salvation, and cause Your anger toward us to cease.

If God were truly impassible, we would have no way to relate to Him. God’s anger, God’s wrath is not like human anger. He does not “fly off the handle”. Yet it is described as being fierce.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.

The LORD God is our guide and guard. Personal, yet infinite. Faithful. We are to be like Him; our walk is to be blameless.

 

So pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm.
Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O Lord. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.

The Lord would never frighten, confound, dismay or put to shame just for the thrill of it.  His purposes—even in judgement—are always restorative, “that they may seek [His] name”.

God is not our enemy.  It is we who are at enmity with Him, until we surrender to his love.

I said, “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.”

What on earth does it mean—“you are gods”?  Doesn’t our faith teach that there is only one God, in three Persons? How can human beings be gods?

St. Athanasius, the hero of Nicea, said, “God became man so that men might become gods”.  Or, to put it another way, Athansius said that “we can [through the work of the Holy Spirit in us] become by grace what God is by nature.”

But My people would not heed My voice, and Israel would have none of Me. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels. Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways!

Israel. One country, one people out of so many on the earth.  And a tiny country at that. Israel was to be a testimony to God’s lovingkindness, to God’s faithfulness. And ironically—providentially—she was that, in spite of herself.

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock…

Some of us realize it.  Some of us don’t.  But all of us are like sheep who have gone astray.  The gospel is the good news that there is a Shepherd out there looking for us.

How long, Lord? Will You be angry forever? Will Your jealousy burn like fire? Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not know You, and on the kingdoms that do not call on Your name.

There is certainly a lot of injustice in our world, now as then. The Lord, the Judge of all the earth, will deal with all of it, in His time. ‘Nobody gets away with nothin’, in the grand scheme of things.

We know this, and yet how easy it is to identify with the frustration and anger the psalmist feels.

Even so, “Lord, have mercy” is the prayer we should be praying.