“When good people are promoted, everything is great,
but when the bad are in charge, watch out!” – Proverbs 28:12 (The Message)
If the ramp up to presidential primaries has your head spinning and or your stomach turning — after all, somebody once said politics was a beauty contest for ugly people — I think these words from the Psalms are for you:
Please reflect before you vote. You need a Heavenly perspective.
1 Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, my soul.
2 I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
8 the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.10 The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.Praise the Lord.” – Psalm 146: 1-10 (NIV)
Our lives begin and end with God, our maker. Since He formed us, he has a legitimate claim to our allegiance and our worship — the glory of our lives is His.
So while I urge you to register and vote — but for the love of Mercy, please do some legitimately independent research before election day — do not place your hope in any candidate from any (or no) political party. Instead, place your hope in God, and ask Him for righteous leaders who will seek to be His instruments.
Note that this Psalm was most likely written for us by a king, so the message is not against government or politics itself. No, they are a warning against mistaking a scalpel for a surgeon. Ethical leaders are great blessing, but even they are fallible. Better we shouldn’t expect divinity from our fellow mortals.
As for our country and its challenges, we are in the realm of God-scale problems now, so I encourage all of us to seek the One who can solve problems of that magnitude.
So how about you? In what — or whom — are placing your hope? Add your comments below?
“As for our country and its challenges, we are in the realm of God-scale problems now, so I encourage all of us to seek the One who can solve problems of that magnitude.”
What an awesome sentence this is 🙂