Psalm 50:1-6 (NRSV)
Read Psalm 50:1-6 on biblegateway.com
Verse 1The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Verse 2Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
Verse 3Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.
Verse 4He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
Verse 5"Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!"
Verse 6The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge. Selah
Devotion
In the stars his handiwork I see..., we once sang, using nature language in our hymns. There is nature language in this psalm, but it is not the "Jobian" kind where nature witnesses God's grandeur. The psalm is rather moral and perhaps eschatological, where nature testifies to the rightness of a moment of God's judgment on covenants kept or broken by God's people.
It has also become ecological. No longer only poetic, we see oily ocean water, shrinking polar ice caps and radioactive deserts proclaiming judgment in a way that could actually change our lifestyles within the generation. With the powerful tools of modernity at our disposal, for God's covenant people to be thinking and living as if the covenant didn't exist is asking for trouble.
Not all talk about God is gospel talk. Sometimes, like in this Psalm, God calls us to task, making us wonder about our sins and the damage we do to God's people and God's world.
Prayer
Dear Lord, what have we done? How could we have broken lands and people as we have? Take us, hold us, forgive us and change us. In Jesus' name. Amen.