Today’s Reading: Psalm 81-83, Romans 11:19-36
Today’s Reflection: Psalm 82:4-5 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
Because “the foundations of the earth are out of course”, or shaken, or you might say out of order…the wicked rise to power and crush those standing in their way or subservient to them. The most tragic manifestation of this kind of suppression is the poor and needy among us. In a perfect world, the rich would always help the poor; in a sinful world, the rich often purposely use, suppress, and in some cases, discard the poor.
Here’s my point; we are commanded to DELIVER the poor and needy. We are commanded to rid them out of the hand of the wicked. We are told that the poor “know not” and that they will not understand. We are told that, if they are not delivered, they will walk on in darkness.
Our culture often thinks about the poor as if that’s their problem or someone else’s problem, but here, God instructs His people essentially to have pity on the poor and needy. If we don’t, they will go right on to their own demise.
Perhaps you are as challenged with this thought as I am. We often want people to “help themselves”, but God tells us to help those who cannot help themselves! If God tells us to deliver them, then that means, if we do not deliver them, they won’t be delivered…by themselves, or anyone else. This is a God-given assignment. This places the responsibility on God’s people to do something about it. So may we pray today and every day that we will learn to have compassion on those who are less fortunate than us, instead of trying to criticize or compete with them!