December 17, 2011

Today’s devotional reading comes from Psalm 76.

 “Thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry?” (v. 7). 

You know, we often take God for granted.  God is so merciful, forgiving, and loving that we often think that is all that He is.  But these are only some of His attributes.  God is also terrible. 

Webster’s defines terrible as “exciting extreme alarm or intense fear: TERRIFYING.”

Scriptures says, “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.”  God is not to be taken lightly.  He is no lightweight.

We tend to forget that He sent a flood to destroy the wicked of Noah’s day, that only he and his children survived.  We choose not to remember that He destroyed the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and that only Lot and his two daughters lived to tell about it.  We conveniently neglect to recall the spectacle God made of Pharaoh and Egypt in sending plague after plague upon that idolatrous people, completely devastating their economic foundation and finally drowning their military might in the Red Sea. 

And, lest we forget, God’s final act of judgment is yet to come.

God is no lightweight.

Yes, God is loving.  Yes, God is merciful.  Yes, God is forgiving.  But God is also Terrible.  He is to be feared.  We would all do well to remember that.

The Still Man