From heaven you pronounced judgment, and the land feared and was quiet—Psm 76:8

It has been a while since I have been able to write a devotional article here at Lillie-Put. My world has been anything but quiet. And during busy seasons (which seems my lot in life just now) it is a lot easier to post a quick pic than it is  to set aside a slab of time to read and consider a response to a verse of Scripture. But a slab has thankfully presented itself and so here I am!

 Our verse about Heaven today includes within it the subject of judgment. My personal meditation on Psalm 76:8 almost immediately took me to Romans 8:18-23.

¹⁸ Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.¹⁹ For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. ²⁰ Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, ²¹ the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. ²² For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children,^[a]including the new bodies he has promised us.

I seldom think of the world as a quiet place. A broken place, a groaning place, a hectic place,a busy place sure all these things fit… but a quiet place? Not hardly, unless of course I was to rise at 2 A.M. every morning and frankly who has the energy for that?

Now not all hustle and bustle is a bad thing. God has called us to be productive and to work at what our hands find to do to further his kingdom; But the world has forgotten the Reason for its hustle and the Purpose for its bustle and has bypassed God in the name of self-progress. And so it is that world groans just waiting…just waiting for God to reveal Himself and His children. When God does reveal Himself all those who have forgotten Him will remember and will mourn. His revelation will come in the form of judgment and then the hustle and the bustle will stop and all the land will be quiet with a holy fear.

The Scripture says of that time,

Then everyone—the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the wealthy, the powerful, and every slave and free person—all hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. ¹⁶ And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. ¹⁷ For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to survive?”Rev. 6:15-17