Thursday, January 8th | Daily Devotion

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. -Psalm 82:1-3

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Good morning. Good morning.  I pray that this message finds you wonderful on this incredible Thursday morning as we continue in our song through the key of life for our daily devotional.

As we stated before, this week is my opportunity to usher you in  to a space and place that you can then in turn do  with your family individually. But for this week, I'll be doing it from an interpretive perspective myself.

So, could focus our attention on the 82nd Psalm. I'm just gonna read a little bit. I encourage you in your free time, read the whole Psalm and then have a wonderful discussion if you can, as it relates to how you can see some of these things playing out even at today.

A Psalm of Asaph. “God has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted  and the destitute.” And he goes on to “rescue the needy…”

This psalm in and of itself speaks directly to an area and space of what injustice looks like  from David's perspective.

Asaph was considered to be one of his chief  musicians who, there in turn begins to play out this notion where God is in the courtroom and inside of this courtroom, he is administering an area of justice. And when he talks about gods [the little G] that was a known reference to human folk who had divine authority, i.e. kings,  judges, etcetera.

Inside of that place, are exercising divine authority and he wanted to establish and maintain the fact that he was the divine authority of power and position. This speaks directly to, speaking truth to power, that the systems, the government systems were corrupt. And in turn, because of the corruption of the government systems, the weak, the needy, the oppressed found themselves at the mercy of those who were considered to be wicked in nature. And he asked a question, how you gonna show partiality to the wicked? How long are you gonna allow the wicked folk to still maintain?

So here's my question to you. Does ideological injustice have any theological repercussions? And the answer is yes.

In other words, we're called to do more than just pray for folk, but we also are called to speak up in areas and spaces where leadership is unjust. It's no mystery that this is the Psalm that was laid on my heart as we look at our playing field, in which case, even there's siege within our own country as it relates to leadership.

And many may be asking after watching the events on yesterday in Minnesota, God, where do you stand? And God says, I always stand on the side of the oppressed. I always stand against and in opposition to injustice.

So here are my questions for you. What spaces is God calling you to speak up and speak truth to power in? How can you ensure that you are creating an environment which is both theologically sound, but also practically prudent for your existence in life? And what does God call us to do  in the face  of injustice?

Let's go about our day with these thoughts in mind. God bless you, have an incredible morning. See you tomorrow.