Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The godly are all gone?

Continuing in the Psalms this morning we read:
"I have taken refuge in the Lord.
    So how can you say to me,[a]
    “Flee to the hills like a bird
        because the wicked
        have already bent their bows;
        they’ve already strung their arrows;
        they are ready to secretly shoot
        those whose heart is right”?
When the very bottom of things falls out,
    what can a righteous person possibly accomplish?

As Israelis go to the polls, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not permit a Palestinian state to be created under his watch if he is re-elected. Trailing his center-left opponent Isaac Herzog in opinion polls, the three-time leader has sought to shift the focus away from socio-economic issues and on to security challenges, saying he alone can defend Israel.


He said that if he is re-elected, the Palestinians would not get the independent state they seek in the West Bank, East Bank and Gaza.



And there you go. A very difficult subject gets more difficult.

I recently talked to a friend I met while on a trip to Israel five years ago, and he believes the Israelis are wrong on this issue because he has seen the abject poverty in which Palestine Bible College (all Christians) are living in. He has seen the wall that was constructed years ago to keep bombers out that has proved to be a way to keep families apart as well.


I'm not giving an opinion on this to anyone because I don't have one except I wished we could form some sort of consensus and come together to talk about a Palestinian state. Just a few meager yards of real estate would be nice. But I understand that if we did do that, bombers would be that much closer. 


It is not an easy subject, or we would have solved it years and years ago. We have not, right up until this moment.


I include Psalms 12 in its entirety because it seems to speak to us all, right here, right now.

"Help, Lord, because the godly are all gone; the faithful have completely disappeared from the human race!


"Everyone tells lies to everyone else; they talk with slick speech and divided hearts.


"Let the Lord cut off all slick-talking lips and every tongue that brags and brags, that says, 

"We're unbeatable with our tongues! Who gets the best of us with lips like ours?

"But the Lord says, 'Because the poor are oppressed, because of the groans of the needy, I'm not standing up. I will provide the help they are gasping for.'


"The Lord's promises are pure, like silver that's been ratified in an oven, purified seven times over!


"You Lord, will keep us, protecting us from this generation forever. The wicked roam all over the place, while depravity is praised by human beings."


As someone once said, "Have mercy on us, O Lord. Have mercy on us."


1 comment:

Kevin H said...

When I was about 14, I read "the Late Great Planet Earth," which I now regret very much. I wish it and its ilk had never been written. It sold a cheap, shallow, and simplistic view of Jesus, the Gospel, history, Israel, and just about everything. I thought --as author Hal Lindsay said -- that the 1948 founding of modern Israel was the start of the End Times and that Jesus would surely be here to wrap things up by 1988 or so. Too many people a still embrace this dangerous worldview (It seems wrong to call it theology.) And they do so at the expense of the Gospel of grace peace mercy justice and, above all, love. They say "Israel can never be wrong" -- which, according to the Old Testament, has NOT been God's opinion. And they vote for AMERICAN politicians based on what they think is in line with their view of a "divine" Israel, with no apparent regard for the widow, the orphan, the alien,the poor, the least, the lost, (you get it) in either the USA or the Middle East. I fear that these ignorant and misguided folk are making Armageddon a self-fulfilling prophecy. No doubt they rejoice blindly over Netanyahu's reelection. All I can say is "Lord, have mercy on us!"