Trembling Before God

Living in the Spirit
October 18, 2017

Scripture Reading: Psalm 99

The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble!
   He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earthquake!
The Lord is great in Zion;
   he is exalted over all the peoples.
Let them praise your great and awesome name.
   Holy is he!
Mighty King, lover of justice,
   you have established equity;
you have executed justice
   and righteousness in Jacob.
Extol the Lord our God;
   worship at his footstool.
   Holy is he! –Psalm 99:1-5

The time is ripe for us to re-acquaint ourselves with the All-Powerful God. The God we learned to cherish as a child, the loving Father, still cares about our every need but we do not consider trembling before that God. I worked with foster parents who lived on a farm and often had as many as five small children in their charge. They had a huge Doberman. The children rode him he was so big. He was as much their caretaker as the humans. I think he sensed their life challenges. I also knew never to get out of the car when I drove into their driveway if the children were playing in the yard until one of the adults came out to welcome me. The Doberman was the children’s guardian angel. Similarly, God calls us to partnership in assuring and protecting justice for all.

Many children of our Mighty King, lover of justice, establisher of equity are living without justice and equity. We should be very concerned about that.

  • People are dying for lack of clean water,
  • Refugees are escaping certain death with no one willing to receive them
  • Vast discrepancies exists among children of color in school advancement
  • The working poor have little or no healthcare
  • Children are being left in unsafe child care settings because their parents cannot afford to pay for quality care
  • An epidemic of opioid drug use exists because companies make huge profits from the sale of prescription drugs.

I compiled this list from one night’s news.

While we can rest comfortably in the love of God, we must answer God’s call to create a world where all experience justice. Evil thrives in inequality. As it grows, it smothers that which is good resulting in more and more injustice. We must get educated and get involved to let the principalities and powers of our world know where we stand on these and other similar issues. We serve a mighty God who has our backs as we do the Lord’s justice. I somehow do not like the idea of standing before God and explaining why I did nothing. God does not expect each of us to do everything; God does expect all of us to do justice.

Prayer: Almighty God, empower us as we do your justice on our world today. 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 America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.