Aug. 27 – Psalm 53

To the leader: according to Mahalath. A Maskil of David.

1 Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they commit abominable acts; there is no one who does good.

2 God looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.

3 They have all fallen away, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.

4 Have they no knowledge, those evildoers, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God?

5 There they shall be in great terror, in terror such as has not been.
For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly; they will be put to shame, for God has rejected them.

6 O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
When God restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

The fools in their heart say there is no God. (A tangent: The phrase “in their heart”, is a statement referring to the person’s inner life – their true selves. The outward façade of a person may say they believe in God, but inside they don’t. The inner life is what matters as the Triune God reminds again and again.)

To be honest, there are days when believing in God is hard. As I write this Afghanistan is falling to the Taliban, and Haiti has been hit by another earthquake. Screaming, “where are you, God?” feels like the most truthful response.

But walking away from God is not an answer, for to walk away from God is to give into the violence and the destruction, to walk away from God is to let the anarchy and disorder of evil and wrong win the day. In a world where evil and destruction, wrong and terror, appear to have control, we are invited to say there is a different way, choosing to live by a different pattern. Instead of giving in and joining the forces of destruction and despair, the forces that “eat up people”, we can choose the narrow way, the difficult path, the path that leads to life.

In a world where the choice to join the wrong is so easy, we are invited to choose for the wise, for the good, for the way that seeks after God. We do not need to have answers, we don’t need to justify God’s seeming inaction, we don’t need to offer any explanation beyond our lives lived following God. Yes, we will be out of step with many around us, we will have people ridicule us. But the promise of Isaiah 26:3, is that God will keep in perfect peace the person whose mind and heart are set on God. Even as we cry out to God, we are stating that we believe God exists and someday will reveal His presence.

PRAYER:

We sometimes wonder where you are, O Lord, we sometimes doubt that you see what is going on. But we still cling to you, still hold on in hope of what you will do. Remind us that you hold on to us in your loving faithfulness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.