The Defenders

You can say my spiritual phonograph needle is stuck, but I can't seem to escape this recurring theme:

The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless....
You encourage [the afflicted], and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed. (Psalm 10:14, 17-18)

My observation is that when people read this, they (and I) tend to make the application to how God cares for me when I'm the victim, how he listens to my cries and defends me when I'm being oppressed. And I'm not arguing against that. Thank God that he does!

But what I'm being convicted of is that the application doesn't stop with how God meets my needs. This is describing, again, the character of God. And since I'm supposed to be becoming more godly in my own character, I have to look at the character of God to see what it really means to be godly. It's more than just avoiding extra-marital affairs or cutting out profanity.

Since I've been saved by God's grace, I am empowered and freed by the Holy Spirit to let go of self-centered values and be infused with God's values. And God's values are all about the good of his creation and everybody in it. What breaks his heart, as seen in this psalm, is human suffering, especially when the victim is alone in the world, with no voice and no one to help.

God keeps convicting me of my own responsibilities to act on his behalf. It's got to be primarily through his people--his respresentatives on earth--that he "encourages the afflicted" and "defends the oppressed." How can my heart not break for what breaks God's heart?

Merciful Father, teach me your mercy. Show me who to encourage and on whose behalf I should exert my influence. And please, raise up your church to engage, in a major way, the giants of poverty, disease and oppression that affect billions of people. If not us, Lord, who? Amen.