For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
The lesson of this proverb is one that all too many people today will learn the hard way. It is better, you will be happier and the world will be a better place, if you are poor and humble than if you are proud and have ill-gotten wealth, wealth gained through dishonesty, fraud, and theft. Trust the Lord and be joyful, or spend your life pursuing goals which will never give you the fulfillment you desire.
There are two parts of this psalm that resonate with me. They are not really connected, at least not for me, today. First, can I say verse one is true for me?
“Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
For me “go to the house of the Lord” means going to where God’s people are gathering, when they are gathering. When someone asks me if I am going to such and event, do I reply with a joyful, “Let’s do this thing!”, or do I reply, “I don’t feel like it today”? I pray that God’s Spirit will inspire me to the former.
The second is in verse 6 where the psalmist asks us to pray for peace in Jerusalem. Every time I read this I am convicted that we should do this. I am not one of those whose actions and attitudes determines whether or not there will be peace in Jerusalem, but I can pray that God’s Spirit will influence those who are. I believe that peace will only come when all of those involved have a heartfelt desire for peace than for whatever else motivates their actions. This is not something which can be imposed from without. Each and everyone of the individuals involved must be transformed by God’s Spirit to desire peace.
On the day of Pentecost when Peter stepped forward to speak to the crowd, he quoted the prophet Joel. What struck me was that the prophecy Peter quoted said that God would pour out His Spirit upon all people in the last days. Peter was saying that the time of that prophecy had come. If those were already the last days, then today we are certainly living in the last days as well. Yet I see a lot of Christians living their lives not expecting the Spirit to be poured out upon them the way it was poured out on the disciples in the upper room on Pentecost.
I struggle with the fact that we do not see Christians performing the kinds of miracles recounted in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. I struggle with the fact that I do not perform such miracles. Yet, I fear asking for such miracles because I know that hubris, pride in myself, is one of my weaknesses. If I performed the kinds of miracles which Jesus promised to His followers, and to which Peter refers here, I am afraid that I would become full of myself. Perhaps this is the problem, I do not have sufficient humility to allow God to work such wonders through me. Oh Lord, give me the humility which will allow Your Spirit to work through me.
I love the image of God which is conveyed in David’s song recounted here. It is the image of what a father wishes he could do when his child is in danger. It is an image writers of heroic fiction attempt to convey of what their heroes do when confronted by evil. We wish we had the power to confront the dangers this way, but we do not. We need to humbly accept that we are dependent on God for salvation from many of the dangers we, or our loved ones, face in this world. However, read that song and remember that God is indeed capable of such a heroic rescue. When we cry out to God, He will come to our rescue and if it requires a heroic rescue, then a heroic rescue is what we will see.
I have tried twice to recount stories which remind me of what this song says about God’s power and ability to come to our rescue and could not express the image which this song conveys to me. I mentioned God’s miraculous power in my commentary on Acts. The point of both of the stories was that the heroic, miraculous power which God uses to rescue us is not always obvious as heroic and miraculous. Sometimes, it is just people doing “what anybody would do in that situation.”