Joseph Gill

It’s scary outside.

As a Christian, and as a political and social conservative, I will come right out and say that I am wrestling with some very negative emotions in connection with the current state of the “Union.” Vying for the top spot on my emotive charts right now are such feelings as dread, helplessness, resentment, even hatred.

It’s all too easy, when tumultuous floodwaters rise, to become so fixated on the roaring tide that we forget: the LORD sits enthroned over the flood. (Ps 29:10)

In Psalm 6, David described some dire circumstances. He cried out to God with such words as:

I am languishing…my bones are troubled (:2)

[I]n Sheol who will give you praise? (:5)

I am weary with my moaning … I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief…because of all my foes. (:6, 7)

David was in much deeper distress than you and I are (most likely.) The man was literally afraid for his life. I’d like to point out, for our encouragement and instruction, that despite the ferocity of his enemies, David’s attention was not on them. He wasn’t out attacking or appeasing them. In fact, David's solution to the problem of harassing evildoers, was not to deal with them directly at all—at least, not at first. He understood his trouble as, above all else, the rebuke and discipline of Yahweh. Only after he was satisfied that he had reached God did he bother to address human tormentors; and that more or less dismissively. He had already attended to what he saw as the root problem, namely, his relationship with God. David's estimation of his enemies is comparatively small and light. To him, they are nothing more than the rod of correction in the hand of his God.

For all their rabid (and, if we’re candid, intimidating) fury, the godless are not nearly so determinative or important as they may seem, or wish us to believe. Our first problem is to fix things with God.

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