March 29, 2023
“In a time of threat, prayer can be a rediscovery of the sovereign God who wins by letting our opponents win and then transforming the expected result. This rediscovery can keep God’s witnesses faithful in spite of threats.”
RC Tannehill
As I sat in the foyer last Friday afternoon - this quote all but leapt off the page. I thought with no small wonder, “How unlike us is the Lord?!” On Monday evening, when I read the heartbreaking news from our sister church in Nashville - this quote came to mind almost immediately. Maybe it’s the former fencer in me - but my gut reaction to threats and opponents is often to respond in kind, or wall myself off from danger. These instincts are not just socially reinforced, they are celebrated and championed. Maybe you share these instincts with me, maybe you have also seen the damage done by living according to them.
In Psalm 139, David meditates and the wonder and intimacy of life before a Sovereign, Omnipotent God. Verses 1-6 reveal that the LORD is all knowing; 7-12 reveal that He is ever-present; 13-16 reveal that he is intimately creative; 17-18 show him to be surpassingly wise, and persistently gracious. But 19-22 strike a dissonant note - there is something wrong, something destructive, something in the way between this reality of who God is and how we live. The wonder of verses 1-18 produces the lament and resolve in 19-22. The lament lies in bare reality of the “men of blood,” there is a massive contrast between the LORD who lovingly creates, and his wayward creatures who willfully destroy. This unrighteousness which leads us to mutual destruction is, in truth, a hostility against the all-knowing, ever-present, lovingly-creative triune God of the Bible. This is injustice to spoken against; it is injustice to be handed over to the LORD - so that it would be met with his perfect justice.
It is hideously grievous to destroy what the LORD has created - the violence of Monday morning has opened a wound that will not be easily healed, but the LORD is near to his people. God’s justice for the lives and families of William Kinney, Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Mike Hill, Katharine Koonce, and Cynthia Peak is coming. It is coming for the innocent and the guilty alike: Audrey Hale and her family will see it too. The end of Psalm 139, takes the statement of verse 1”Lord you have searched me and known me” and restates it as a plea: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” While we wait for this perfect justice - let us do so in the shade of the Cross, with this prayer on our lips. The world is dark, and tempts us with its darkness but the LORD is near to all who call upon Him.
