Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Today's Psalm - It's Good to be the King

Psalm 21 is one of those sometimes called a royal psalm. The psalm is a conversation with God about the king. And it's pretty good to be the king. (Which coincidentally is a line from a Mel Brooks move, History of the World, Part I, I believe. But don't take this as a recommendation for the movie -- not particularly spiritually edifying :-) and also not one of Mel's bests.)

With all the riches and the line about the king being given his heart's desire, Solomon springs to mind as a possible king that the writer has in mind. Solomon asked for wisdom and got much more because he was wise.

There is a vengeful note to the song. God's enemies will be discovered and destroyed. It fits with the times -- the world was and often still is a violent place. One challenging consideration in anytime is just who are God's enemies. We often think we can easily identify them, but perhaps we should be think carefully and wonder if some days we don't make ourselves God's enemies.

History has proven that kings for all their good intentions are often corrupted by money and power. One of the politically charged pieces of news from both the Old and New Testament is there is only one ultimate king and one ruler who we can trust. No wonder the Romans hated the Christians and the Jews. Earthly powers are secondary and don't command our ultimate allegiance. Only God deserves that loyalty. Even the king can be God's enemies and then it isn't so good to be the king!

1 comment:

  1. "Oh I just can't wait to be king"...oh sorry apparently all my comments must be lyrics of kid music today (just in case, that's the Lion King, but I'm sure your kids watched it)

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