"Praise the LORD! Blessed is the one who fears the LORD..." Psalm 112:1
"He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting the LORD." Psalm 112:7
There is plenty of bad news coming at us, plenty to make us afraid.
We can call it righteous anger, or sadness, or frustration. But we're afraid. And we're supposed to be! "News" is code for "bad news." "News" is a shorthand way to refer to "bad things that have happened recently, which we think will interest you."
[Can we pause and have a talk about "news"?
Now, don't get me wrong: I am one of the most passionate advocates for news-reading and news-listening that you'll ever find. But the title "news" on our stations and programs, papers and feeds, is not true. It's not new. It's not reportage of things that have never happened before. It's simply a breathless description of the trail of slime the slug of sin leaves as it eeks toward judgment.
"There is nothing new under the sun," Ecclesiastes 1:9 states. That was 3,000 years ago.
There's only been one new thing that's happened since, only one new thing that's occurred (and occurs) under the sun. And that new thing is the coming of the Creator God in Jesus Christ the Son.
And so whatever is about Jesus--who He is, what He's done, what this means, what He's doing--that's real news. That's news!
So I think we should read the news every day! And we should listen to the news intently on Sundays and through the week. And we should get excited about the news, get passionate, zealous and enthusiastic. And we should talk about the news all the time.
Just don't confuse what the world calls "news" with that which is the only luminous, singular, revealing, true, new message the world has ever heard. And get this: it's new every single morning! So pour yourself some coffee and unfold the real newspapers.]
Here's some news: that in a world sloshing with bad news like a sewer after a rainstorm, a person can be unafraid. How can we have "firm hearts" in the face of a flimsy future? "Fear the LORD."
The bad news of the world is bigger than any of us, all of us together. No rally or movement or petition or march is going to do anything to slow the shifting currents of injustice and exploitation that have been the real oceanic motion shaping our world. But God is bigger than the world.
How much bigger? Bigger in every conceivable way. Like facing an opponent four times your size, who is also four times smarter, four times funnier, four times more creative, four times as tough, four times as energized, four times as experienced, four times as strong, four times as good looking with four times as many friends, four times as good of eyesight and reflexes and flexibility, and sheesh!
Only God is not four times more glorious than the world.
How much bigger are you than a drip of water clinging to a washed pot? Or than dust on a picture frame? How afraid are you of those things? Isaiah 40:15 describes "the nations" in this way compared to God: drips and dust. But then it clarifies, lest we even then misunderstand: "All the nations are as nothing before Him; they are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness." Isaiah follows up with a fearful question: "To whom then will you liken God?"
Whoa.
I've had many talks these last several months with folks feeling overwhelmed, fragile, anxious, upset. I have those same feelings. But why? Ed Welch captured it in the title of his book, "When People are Big and God is Small."
Can we trust the LORD? Can we have those firm hearts? Can we live "blessed" lives under "bad news"?
We sure can, but we must fear the LORD more than we fear the world, this life, and all its quote-unquote news. (And this means that we need to consider His News more and more closely than we do the world's. "A penny can block our view of the shining sun if we hold it close enough to our eyes. Likewise, our problems can blind us to the glory of God if we dwell on them enough." [Prayer, Onwuchekwa, 85])
Is God fearful to you? I certainly hope that's not all He is. I hope you love Him and delight in Him and sing His praises. But where does our confident faith come from? It comes from the fear of the LORD. Here is Someone against whom all we fear is as nothing. No-Thing. Boo-yah.
How's that for news?
Take heart, my friends. Here's real news: our God is fearsome! And faithful!
Praise the LORD
Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash
