Ago

"God is with the generation of the righteous," Psalm 14:5.

Right smack dab in the middle of the psalm, more or less, that line jumps out from the rest of it. It affirms hope in the midst of a decaying culture. The culture lives effectively as though God cared nothing for justice and equity. The culture does abominable deeds, nobody does good, no one seeks after God. It's not merely individuals, it's the culture itself: together they have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt. Now, this psalm describes a culture from three thousand years ago. Three thousand.  Ago. When we get all worried about the state of current affairs, and lament the passing of  past glories, God speaks in our time that the world wallows in its way long-established mess. And we hear God say that he, as ever he has done, stands as the eternal Refuge for his people. For his righteous people. He restores his own.

With a brother or sister today, we turn our eyes from the human culture fallen around us and look hopefully to God's restoration. And thankfully, together, we become willful participants in God's righteous culture. Sky kingdom.