Father Is In Charge

In the churches in West Africa in which it was my privilege to serve for a number of years, Sunday worship would invariably commence with the choir singing, “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.” (see Hab. 2:20). I found this ritual strangely moving, and when I read v. 4 of this psalm the memory of those beautiful Nigerian harmonies came back to me.

For the psalmist, the truth of God’s sovereignty brought comfort in a context of violence (2), the collapse of the foundations of human society (3), and the activities of the “wicked” (6). This situation was similar to that which shaped the lives of my African friends; their traditional social structures were falling apart and the ensuing vacuum provided opportunities for armed robbers and other evil people to create fear and confusion. In such circumstances, the heartfelt confession that the Lord remains “on his heavenly throne,” that he “hates” violence, and that “the upright will see his face” are not empty statements but bedrock beliefs that prevent believers from stumbling and convey hope that a broken world will one day be put right.

The great German preacher, Helmut Thielicke, in a series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer which he preached while Hamburg was under constant bombardment during the Second World War, said that, if we can pray from the depths of our hearts the words “Our Father,” we will have done what is necessary to retain faith, hope and sanity in a world that sometimes appears to be overwhelmed by violence and wickedness. The psalmist provides our first lesson in such praying; Jesus raises it to a new level in the revelation that the Lord “in his holy temple” may be addressed as our dear Father.

Read Matthew 6:9-13, noticing the similarities with Psalm 11. Then praise our Father in heaven for his powerful love, and ask that his kingdom of peace and justice may come on earth.