The Christmas Judge

One of the psalms used in the Advent/Christmas season is Psalm 98.  In fact Issac Watts bases his hymn, "Joy to the World" on this particular passage of scripture.  After all the calls to sing and shout praise because God has done marvelous deeds ( ie, Exodus and return from Exile) as expressions of God's remembering his faithful love toward Israel, we have the concluding verse:
let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.  He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.  (TNIV)

The occasion for singing is God's coming judgment.  Now that will stir joy in our hearts won't it.  Such news should set us to singing and dancing.  But given our religious climate and treatment of judgment, either the words of the psalmist falls on deaf ears or they shake us enough to ponder their impact.  Sadly, many of us have grown up in the Bible Belt where God coming as a Judge is grounds for shock and terror, fear and fright.

Here the writer welcomes the Judge's arrival because he comes to set the world and its people right side up.  Righteousness is God's power for life.  God's judgment is an appraisal that we need "righting".

It doesn't take much for us to be confronted with the truth that we live in a world that is upside down, gone amuck, stuck in the mire that we inherited and have continued creating for ourselves.  Any newspaper accounts come to mind?

Some signs that God's judgments are at work are people working for peace in times of international and national conflict,  works of justice and mercy all around, increased attention to the plight of the homeless, willingness to respond to the groans of neighbors near and far, and children (little girls) who face fear in order to learn and receive an education.

Come, Lord Jesus, with justice and equity and put all things right!  Bring Shalom!

If the Kingdom Fits

In the Gospels, John the Baptist comes with a pointed message, a message Jesus will later take as his own:  Repent (change your heart and your lives)for the Kingdom of God is at hand.  While each gospel has its own way of presenting the message, the impact is the same....turn Godward.  You kind of get the sense that John believes we best get on board with this drama God is writing or be swept aside.

What strikes me about all this is that John understands that God is up to something that we repent into like a train passing through town that we need to board or a wave approaching we need to surrender to.

In short, we are not trying to make God fit into our small, tiny world and its expectations.  God is inviting us to fit ourselves into the kind of world God is shaping and forming.  I am more and more aware that I practice fitting God into my neatly packaged world and avoid the sacrifices needed to fit into God's drama.  How goes it with you?