Day 59 - Issue 21
Psalm 8:3 NLT
'When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers – the moon and the stars you set in place'
I grew up with a great degree of confidence that I could exercise a positive influence in the world. It was the 1960s and in the dying embers of modernity hope was infectious, personified by President JF Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I anticipated in my lifetime justice would indeed flow like a river, and I would have a part to play. While it started well with my work with Oxfam, I grew even more convinced once I became a Christian. Here surely was the manifesto to improve every life, everywhere.
Some 50 years later, that confidence hasn’t exactly faded away, but more given way to a fresh recognition of God’s grace and my place in God’s world. Rather than pour over newspapers, read journals, watch endless news channels, I prefer to stand in the garden at night and gaze up into the starlit sky. To reflect upon how infinitesimally small I am standing in one miniscule corner of the vast galaxy I am in awe of the magnitude of God, while intrigued with God’s magnificence. Once I was full of ideas for change, a vocal campaigner for justice; today I stand in quiet awe of God.
I’ve not lost my appetite for social justice, yet have despaired of humanity’s capacity to realise this through either altruism or liberal democracy. At heart I am selfish and so even with all my internal commitment to justice, I still exercise due care for my own welfare ahead of those whose plight I promote and campaign for. I feel like two people in one body constantly at war with each other. So it is essential I stand and gaze and grow in awe of my God. It is, after all, God alone who reveals what righteousness is. It is God alone who creates within me the capacity to put others’ interests ahead of my own. My skyward gaze is in fact a highly articulate prayer.
QUESTION: When was the last time you stopped to look at the stars and consider the greatness of God?
PRAYER: Lord, may my hope be only in you because only you have the power to bring real change.
