The mountains that surround Jerusalem

Today’s devotional is a meditation on Psalm 125:

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,
which cannot be moved, but abides forever.

Where is stability in our world? How many who are in their 30’s will have a 30 year career in one job? How many businesses that we visit this year will be gone ten years from now? How will the tax codes that refunded us money this year take it away next? Change is the nature of this world, not stability. Dependability, truth, reliability, loyalty – these attributes of stability are to be found in the Lord, who abides forever as he is, and, in occasional glimmers, in those people who seek to be like him.

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people,
from this time on and forevermore.

If there is anything that people in this world seek, it is security. In many ways I can protect or insulate my family from the cares or the dangers of this world, but that wall is admittedly fragile. We pay our government dearly to protect us from these dangers, yet it cannot. We accumulate money and assets to guard ourselves against the instability of the world in open denial of the reality that whatever the stock market giveth, the stock market taketh. So we join this club, or attend that school, or network with these people, or identify with that church, only to find that these things don’t bring us security either. The only true source of security in this world is God. He is faithful to those who are faithful to him, and that faithfulness is not bound by time, location, or circumstance.

For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest
on the land allotted to the righteous,
so that the righteous might not stretch out
their hands to do wrong.

God is our protection from evil, even that evil that comes from within ourselves. How might the world have been different if Cain had listened to God’s warning that sin was at the door? How different might our world be if we listened to the promptings of our gut, our emotions, of his Spirit about the temptation waiting to mar the goodness that God has given us?

Do good, O Lord, to those who are good,
and to those who are upright in their hearts.
But those who turn aside to their own crooked ways
the Lord will lead away with evildoers.
Peace be upon Israel!

Peace comes from God as the result of relying on his stability, resting within his security, yielding to his protection from evil. Yet that peace is not an absence of change, or insecurity, or evil. Not only do these persistently intrude into the lives of the faithful, but frequently, these are precisely the problems that God calls his children to righteously confront so that others might have the hope of peace. Yet that peace will not typically be found in our environment, but in our heart and our relationships.

May God grant you peace through his grace,

Ron