Psalm 2: Heaven Laughs

Read Psalm 2.

With bleary eyes, I looked at my phone…3:34 AM.  For most of us, we understand that coded collection of numbers and letters as a disruption in our normal routines.  Perhaps it’s an expected interruption like the first few months of a baby’s life.  Maybe it’s anticipation or anxiety that is making sleep elusive.  For me, it was all of the above.  My family and I recently started down the path towards some major changes (more on that soon) and also recently welcomed our beautiful son to the world.  But I knew in that particular moment that it was not our boy that was keeping me awake.

Worry (I use this term intentionally because I am not describing clinical anxiety here) about the future is like being held captive.  Your captor is a master of human psychology and breaking human resolve.  He makes sure that you are constantly on the edge of exhaustion rushing into your room turning all the lights on and blaring unbearably loud noises and then leaving you in your panicked state.  Fear about tomorrow invades the deep watches of the night leaving us trying to play God from our beds.

“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us'”(Psalm 2vv.3-4). The psalmist here describes kings who are attempting to establish their own sovereignty apart from the rule of God.  For them, the peaceful, just reign of God begins to feel like bonds and cords of slavery.   Psalm 2 is about nations conspiring against the rule of God.  But its also about the things that we plan and the things that we fear in God’s absence.

Often our response to the waking nightmares of worry is to plot our own course.  We use our imaginations to construct doomsday scenarios.  We believe the worst about tomorrow and thus the worst about God and begin to scheme every way we can to stockpile our own needs so we will no longer need to rely on the provision of God.

And yet in the midst of all our attempts to take the reins, to be yet captains of our own fate, heaven laughs.  Heaven laughs because there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.  Heaven laughs at the absurdity of our attempts to manage the affairs of the world from our beds.  Heaven laughs like a parent laughs when a child tells them there are monsters under the bed.  Heaven laughs because the Lord of all the universe loves us, is concerned with us and rejoices with us.

Verse to meditate on throughout the day:  Happy are all those who take refuge in him.