Psalm 93 and New Orleans

1 The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty;
The Lord is clothed,
He has girded Himself with strength.
Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved.
2 Your throne is established from of old;
You are from everlasting.

3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
The floods have lifted up their voice;
The floods lift up their waves.
4 The Lord on high is mightier
Than the noise of many waters,
Than the mighty waves of the sea.

5 Your testimonies are very sure;
Holiness adorns Your house,
O Lord, forever.

We’re thinking about floods lately, with the infrastructure breakdown in New Orleans.
Two things are true in the middle of all of this. One is that Jesus calls us to clothe the naked, feed the hungry. If you do it to the least of these, you do it to me. Once again, we’ve seen the massive relief efforts begin to obey Jesus.

The second thing to remember is less obvious in the middle of chaos. God is in charge. He didn’t drop the ball here. He knows what He’s doing, even if we don’t. More to the point, God is doing something. He’s not looking away, cringing while Satan has his heyday in this disaster. That never happens, and that should encourage us. “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him,” Romans 8:28 tells us. This is a time to ask if we really believe that, and the rest of Scripture. Nahum 1:3 says that the LORD has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm. Amos 3:6: “When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” Huh. Won’t hear that on CNN. God is in charge. Psalm 29:10 reminds us that the LORD sat enthroned over the flood. That means Noah’s flood, and Katrina’s too. It has astounded me how political this whole thing has become. The left blames the storm on conservative environmental policies. The right blames the government for acting too slowly. WHO was it that’s enthroned over this mess, again? The United States? A mayor? A governor? A president? Who are we looking to to save us? Who does the Bible say is in a position to save us?

God is in charge, and we are so frail, and dependent on Him. We are inadequate to protect ourselves from God’s world. We need God’s good graces to mute the storms to what we can handle. We fall apart morally when our structures are washed away. We need God’s good graces to restrain evil in each human heart. Sometimes God withholds these graces for a time, and we don’t know why, but there is a reason, and it is for our ultimate good. And we also need God’s good graces to coordinate providentially the huge-scale relief efforts happening even now.

Like never before, let us worship our sovereign and grace-filled God today, and ask for His mercy to return to us.