Friday in The Week of The 3rd Sunday After Pentecost (06/26/09)

The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught.

--Psalm 9:15

There's some heavy stuff in Psalm 9. There are declarative statements about the Lord, encouragements to praise, and a prayer for divine grace. But then comes this talk of nations that have sunk in the pit that they made. What's that all about?


In In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal, former U.S. President Richard Nixon asserted that every world leader seeks peace -- but peace on their terms. When such terms become destructive of the common good, is it any wonder that nations sink into a kind of pit?


The evening news chronicles all of this. We can become numb to it and only tune in when the shock value is high. We ask: "What's the world coming to?" Presbyterian Christians, for example, highlight the providence of God. Such a teaching is tough to hold onto when it looks as though God is anything but providential. To the contrary, it seems as though God is out to lunch.

The psalmist takes a kind of rugged solace in the truth that God has made himself known (Ps. 9:16a). In Christ, mostly fully, that making known happened. Up on the cross He was hoisted. Into the pit of our sins He sunk. The fate of all hung on His shoulders. His resurrection victory comes not only to prove a point. It comes as a gift.

Nations -- and individuals! -- may do what they do, and they may fall into the resulting pit.
But for the child of God, gifted with all that Christ won, the pit doesn't win.


PD