At our church home group last night, we read through Psalm 145. It starts, ‘I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever.’ It’s about the greatness of God, His power, reliability, compassion…
We paused and reflected. Roy said, ‘I like the verse, ‘The Lord is good to all’. It includes everybody, every colour, every race, every ability…’
I paused and thought about conversations through the day involving very different people… the elderly gent, recovering from a stroke… the woman, home from a lovely holiday in Crete investigating her ancestry there… the man concerned about his health, reflecting on his childhood with parents and four brothers in a two bedroomed house… the young woman anxious about a job interview on Friday… the woman concerned that she should get important administrative work done correctly… concern for a teenaged girl on life support after a road traffic accident… an older man about to marry again…
The Lord is good to all… related to each life situation… it’s about all of us.
I remembered the old nursery rhyme ‘Ring-a-ring of roses, A pocket full of posies. A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down!’ The story, that some dispute, is that it relates to death from the plague. All fall down. It’s about a plague that affected all.
I remembered the REM song ‘Everybody Hurts’. It’s about feeling alone:
If you’re on your own in this life
The days and nights are long
When you think you’ve had too much
Of this life to hang on
But because hurt is common to all of us, we’re not alone.
I returned to Roy’s verse. I read it again in context, ‘The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.’ It’s about a compassionate God who cares for all… the hurting and the sick… And my friends from yesterday are all included – as Roy said.
As we know Everybody Hurts was written as a support for those contemplating suicide.
I am not a humanist as I do not fit into any box. But I am often aware how “God’s” words can easily be adopted by atheists.
We know that ‘Man can be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. Man can be good to all; can have compassion on all he has made.’
The joy of Man’s help is that it is real and not a nebulous hope. A nebulous hope that I know helps many people get through life when everything seems to let them down.
Can the babies and children, dying every day, in war-torn regions who have never had a chance to fulfil their futures thank a god for their unfinished lives? I don’t see how they can. And, they may have been given the DNA of a murderer or altruist. If your God knows, will he treat them differently?
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