I get mad when I hear that a shooter has inexplicably killed more than twenty innocent people. Again. In a church, no less.
It’s becoming all-too-frequent: concerts, schools, churches, other public spaces.
These atrocities remind us that evil pervades our world, and we’ve got to be careful that we don’t develop a jaded attitude.
We might even lose confidence in the power and sovereignty of the God we serve.
Listen to the psalmist:
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:1-6).
Christians took that psalm and applied it to the events surrounding the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus (cf. Acts 4:25-26). Jewish leaders and Roman officials conspired to kill God’s Son.
But look at what God was doing. Laughing.
That’s not the kind of laugh that a couple of good friends might share over a funny joke.
Rather, God “holds them in derision.”
It’s a laugh you don’t want to hear, not when it’s directed at you.
It’s the laugh of an Almighty God toward feeble human beings who think they can flaunt his ways with impunity.
Toward people for whom life—all life, whether preborn or post-born, whether black, white, or brown, whether poor or rich, whether like us or not—is not sacred or precious.
Toward governments who ignore God’s moral code for the sake of political correctness.
Toward societal structures that ignore the cries of the poor and marginalized and that privilege the rich.
God laughs.
He laughs because he knows their resistance is futile.
He laughs because his justice will be realized.
Maybe God is looking down now as he sees the feeble resistance that so many people offer to his kingdom, and he laughs.
Not that it pleases him, because it breaks his heart.
He laughs because he’s reigning from his throne, and the whole world will soon see it.
He laughs so that we can look past the evil around us to a day when his ways will once again rule the world. —Chuck
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