Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-225 Sunday 19 Nov 2000

Reading: PSALM 37 – TRUST, WAIT, LOOK

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

We live in a world in which the wicked may often seem to ‘flourish like a green tree’ (v 35). ‘Lord, help me to trust your just rule.’

‘Heaven for sparrows and Christians the earth for us,’ said Hitler. Where is God while the wicked are in the ascendancy over the innocent, the good, and the godly? (Also Ps 49; 73)

Trust and wait. Do not jump to conclusions before God has concluded this business. Do not get steamedup at the good fortune of the wicked (vs 1,7). Do not evaluate life simply by what you can see appearances are invariably deceptive.

Consider the outcome of wicked lives (vs 7,17,22,34). Notice how evil has an uncanny knack of destroying itself. It is not Hitler in his pomp in 1935 which tells his story, but the deranged man in his Berlin bunker in 1945 (v 35). And do not be impressed by the unscrupulous famous. They are ephemeral, a mist, unrooted (vs 2,10,20). Assess their worth through Jesus’ question concerning the ultimate personal test: ‘What shall it profit a man’ (See Mark 8:3537).

We are inclined, as Christians, to be defensive about the fact of the ‘prosperous wicked’ as if it puts the justice of God in a poor light; we cannot help feeling that their existence is an embar rassment to God and a criticism of his gospel. But remember, don’t jump to conclusions. The truth is that, in Christ, God has taken this mystery into himself and resolved it in the body of his Son. (See Rom 8:3139)

Urs Balthasar’s words are well worth pondering: ‘When a composer such as God creates the opera of the world and places in its centre his crucified and risen Son, every faultfinding at his work, i.e., whether or not he could have done it better, must be reduced to silence’.

‘Father, in your mind you see a purpose, an outcome, a sum total of my life. By your grace may I travel towards it today. Amen.’

– Dennis Lennon

Copyright Scripture Union, 2000