Living in the Spirit
October 28, 2015
Scripture Reading: Psalm 146
Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish. –Psalm 146:1-4
A wave of thoughts flashed through my mind as I read this Psalm designated for use on All Saints Day. Do not put your trust…in mortals, which all saints are. Interesting. The other instant theme that popped into my head was all the bluster and bravado with which our lives are being blasted by the various candidates for office. Do not put your trust in princes. Perhaps this Psalm was the source of our governmental policy to trust but verify.
As far as the saints are concerned, I am of the lower case faction of sainthood. I think we are all called to be one belonging to the entire company of baptized Christians as Paul addresses us in 1 Corinthians 1:1. Indeed I have known mentors in my own life for whom I would capitalized the “S” and there certainly are many of our ancestors in faith who have demonstrated levels of devotion and dedication that probably do deserve the honorific that goes with the capital “S”. The irony to Paul’s writing is that he is surely one deserving of the honor.
How do we deal with governmental leaders regarding trust? First, I think we must recognize that they are all human and as capable, as each of us are, of making mistakes and having to recover from them. More importantly though for those of us who live in a democracy, we must be trustworthy ourselves in our selection of leaders. The only purpose of government is to foster the Common Good. Governments cannot create a world where we can each have our cake and eat it too but that is what we all seem to want. I see a lot of anger and fear and even hate driving our stances on how to foster the common good and that is just not possible. The very essence of the Common Good is loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. We know the Author of that commandment; we would do well to follow it in every aspect of our lives including our governance.
Prayer: Lord, I rededicate my life this day to living your commandments of love. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.