That Many May Terrify No More

Psalm 10

Why do some people seem to get away with causing misery for others? This is what the psalmist starts out asking, actually, for thirteen verses. Then, as we’ve seen before in the psalms, there is an abrupt change: “But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it and take it in hand” (verse 14).

I’m wondering, how do the oppressed get to experience this? Maybe it’s like when we pray, “Thy will be done on earth …” It can’t then be, “And all the best with that, Lord.” When we pray it, we become partners with God (although lesser ones) in seeing it happen. It’s still his doing, but we place ourselves in his hands to be his hands. So maybe African refugees or mothers with AIDS wondering what’s going to happen to their children are touched by a love army of Christian volunteer missionaries who do what they can for their physical needs, for their children, and whisper prayers of God whose own heart is crushed by their experience but who also has a place for them because of Jesus who descended into our mess.

What if every Christian on earth prayed to move the hearts of pompous leaders whose prideful warring creates many of the conditions that lead to the suffering of their own people, or prevents others from helping them? What if we all pray for Russian President Putin and American President Bush as we hear President Putin speak of a Cuban missile situation in reverse, due to the presne of a missile shield system in Europe? What scares me is that often big powerful men are still little boys inside who, once fighting talk starts, find it very hard to back down.

Our confidence, our hope, our basis for what God entrusts to us to do and to pray, all comes from this, which may also be our prayer:

You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.
Psalm 10:17-18