Daily Verse | Ezra 3:13
No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.
Welcome back, my friends. It’s Wednesday and the beat goes on.
We have foreigners pouring over our Southern border where drugs and human trafficking are revitalized. Thousands of children are being abandoned on the north side of the Rio Grande. We have Marxism in the form of Critical Race Theory consuming our governmental institutions, Wall Street corporations, the entertainment industry, and schools from Kindergarten through university level education, undeniably driving decisions in both state and culture. We have millions of people out of work but businesses can’t get people hired because the government is paying them to stay home. We have inflation starting to rise and hit consumer pocketbooks. Even though we had achieved energy independence for the first time in our nation’s history during Trump’s presidency, gas prices are skyrocketing because eco-nannies think they can control the climate by banning fossil fuels. We have civil unrest by partly violent protesters who are now brandishing guns at passersby in Portland and Texas. Internationally, Israel is under a barrage of missile attacks, Iran is hassling our warships and Russia just knocked out one of our largest pipelines. (Say, what have the FBI and DHS been doing since January that left us vulnerable to such attacks? Any ideas?)
The greatest, freest, most prosperous nation in human history is on the ropes as lawlessness runs rampant and we inch toward another civil war.
I sometimes wonder what God thinks when he looks at the chaos in the United States. I know for a fact that he isn’t surprised by it. In fact, he’s probably laughing at us right now.
12 The wicked plot against the righteous
and gnash their teeth at them;
13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he knows their day is coming.
— Psalm 37:12-13
This isn’t some kind of diatribe pitting Democrats against Republicans, or claiming that Republicans are “righteous” and Democrats are “wicked” (although there is plenty of evidence for the latter). This passage is about “the wicked” in general, that class of evil schemers whoever they are: Democrat or Republican, conservative or libertarian or progressive; socialist or capitalist, gay or straight, white collar or blue collar; black, Asian, Hispanic, white, or Indian; Christian, Muslim or Jew.
The point here is that God isn’t intimidated by the sinister plotting, conniving or conspiring of the evil men and women among us, especially when it is against the innocent, powerless or righteous among us. He laughs at their puny attempts to assert the power that alone belongs to him. He laughs as we would when a toddler attempts to assert their will over us as their parents. He scoffs because one day their pathology will be made clear as they face his judgment.
It’s futile.
I do think he is also grieved by the absence of righteousness. Part of the reason we are in the mess we’re in today is the outright rejection of God and his place in the public square. It used to be that the Church was central to a community. We taught our children from the Bible. We held them to a biblical standard in how we treated other people, how we conducted business, how we related to each other. We used to be a nation that had in common a set of transcendent values based on the Judeo-Christian religion. It didn’t matter if you believed in the Christian God, our society functioned well because our social contract grew out of those shared values. But not today.
40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved him in the wasteland!
41 Again and again they put God to the test;
they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
— Psalm 78:40-41
But all is not lost. God is sovereign and none of this fazes him as perhaps it fazes us. In fact, part of the reason he laughs is that he knows the outcome. In the end, God wins. It really is that simple. While we pray earnestly for God to reassert himself in our country, it’s equally likely that we are a dying nation and God may choose not to intervene. Either way, the test here is not about the country per se, but about how each of us handles our relationship with God and with others in the midst of the chaos.
Stand firm in your convictions. Trust God. Sacrifice where warranted. And know that one day, all will be made right.