I have made a few references to Handel’s Messiah in recent talks, perhaps prompted by listening to it the other day. There is a story that records how a performance of Handel’s Messiah was scheduled and all the preparations were made, the choir rehearsed, the programs printed. What no one had noticed was a printing error on the program. It listed the Hallelujah Chorus as, “The Lord God Omnipotent Resigneth”. One who referred to it, went on to ask, “Was it really an error, or was the printer a cynic, deducing from the condition of the world that the Lord God had resigned, or that he was about to give the world up as a hopeless mess?”
The writer of Psalm 11 asks: When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” This coming Sunday we will briefly explore what answers he comes up with.
Which prompted me to think that much of the Bible is a record of people, individuals, nations, tribes, families facing change, upheaval, and dislocation.
It includes the accounts of families migrating, nations facing famines and wars, leaders both good and bad and all the familiar structures of religion being shaken.
How are your foundations faring?
Our foundations are the things we rely on, and sometimes we find the things we have relied on are showing disturbing cracks. There is an underlying reason that Scripture calls us to trust that which will never let us down:
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Pastor Peter