God's Gift to Man
When I was praying with the morning readings today, I was struck by the first line of Psalm 72, which goes like this: “O God, give your judgment to the kings; your justice to the son of kings; That he may govern your people with justice, your oppressed with right judgment . . .” Huh? What does that mean? I wondered. In checking out the footnotes I learned that as representative of God, the Israelite king was considered the “instrument of divine justice,” so this verse is actually a petition that the king will get what he needs in order to carry out his work, because he can only give “what he has received from God.” Wow! How fitting that is for us today! As disciples of Jesus, we too, can only give what we receive from him. The first thing that came to mind is love. We can only give God’s love to others if we have received it ourselves. Interestingly, reception requires openness, as well as humility. Humility comes in knowing that whatever you have to offer the w