And with darkness comes
uncertainty--this blanket of uncertainty outside me and this gnawing insecurity
within me.
But it’s not quite dark
enough to shroud the danger. To hide that the evil one is on the move. To catch
a glimpse of his unmistakable hand behind the wicked dark of this present
world. Darkness cannot conceal the echo of his roar, nor completely hide the
tragic remains of his devouring. We see them every day; they surround us in
heaps. We read them in print. We hear them from the radio. We see them on the
morning news. And the evening news. And all the between.
These are dark times.
The wicked one is moving. And
he’s still bent on destroying what God made in His own image. Bent on eclipsing
the light with his dark.
And we who are the light
(because we have believed that Christ is the one true Light) feel the pressing
darkness most keenly. The plotting of wicked men. The dimming of righteousness
on the public and private stage. The irrational social antagonism against
Christianity. The slow but steady limiting of religious freedoms. The open
persecution just a body of water away from us. The evil one works through the
wicked to snuff out the right. It has always been this way.
And it’s dark. And we feel
the imminent danger. As if a sword has been drawn and pointed. As if a bow has
been aimed and bent.
And we wonder, where is God in this?
Psalm 37 tells us exactly where
God is.
He is at ease in His Heaven.
Unworried. Not anxious. Not fretting. He’s not surprised. Not scrambling to
regain the upper hand. He never lost it. We look up in this Psalm to find
Him…laughing.
He’s laughing because He
knows. He knows the moment the wicked act to destroy the righteous, they will
be the ones destroyed. They seal their fate. It becomes like that of their
ruler Satan. A broken power. An eternal
judgment. Like a sword plunged into
their own hearts. Like a serpent’s crushed head. They lose the moment they
think they’ve won.
And the righteous? In that
same moment, they are swept up. Held
strong out of reach from the sword and bow. Protected. Preserved. If they
stumble, it is not a headlong crash. It cannot be; God is holding their hand.
So God laughs at the dark.
Because He knows it will not thwart His plan. This destruction of wickedness
and preservation of righteousness will
come to pass. Not a shadow of uncertainty falls from His Heaven. He is over
all. And He is at ease.
So we find ourselves
relaxing. In the midst of this getting-darker world, we cast off our irrational
fears and gnawing insecurities. They become a silly notion as we hold them up
to the bright light of solid truth. The
evil will not win. It has already lost. The wicked will not utterly destroy the
righteous. Their fate is sealed. We may well laugh as our Creator is laughing. And
like a warm dayspring we hold the truth within our hearts. We will be held up.
The sword and bow will be broken.
Beth
The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at
him with his teeth.
The Lord laughs at him, for He sees his day is coming.
The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to
cast down the afflicted and the needy, to slay those who are upright in
conduct.
Their sword will enter their own heart, and their bows
will be broken.
Better is the little of the righteous than the
abundance of many wicked.
For the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the
LORD sustains the righteous.
…When (he) falls, he will not be hurled headlong,
because the LORD is the ONE who holds his hand. (Ps. 37)
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