Scriptures pair the highest invincible qualities and titles of God with compassion for the lowest and vulnerable among us….
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.” -Deuteronomy 10:17-18
God’s power is of the most counter-cultural kind in our day. The Lord of lords is fair and just, the great God works not for the great, but the lowly fatherless. He is mighty in part because he works behind the scenes for the widow. He is awesome because he loves immigrants, who do not even have the power of citizenship and often not even granted human dignity and rights. He gives them what they need and shows them love.
May I always use any small measure of power I have, however meager, for those without it–rather than to perpetuate any kind of personal advancement or to play the sycophant with those having even more worldly power. Then, perhaps, I’ll be doing true Kingdom building rather building a kingdom of my own.
I continue to pray that our leaders in the church do this, and that our leaders in the world do as well. It seems that the orphan (and another kind of fatherless child: the unborn one) are no longer defended because they have no power to trade back to us. The widows among us are forgotten and cloistered away with one another in homes where we only visit to ensure inheritances continue to flow. The immigrants are tossed aside and told to “go home” even while we build our economy on their hardworking and low-earning backs. Our church leaders and government leaders don’t get elected by these people–so because they have no power to give back in return–even the power of a vote–they are not valued.
But God values them. The truly mighty and awesome one shows no partiality. He accepts no informal bartering of “constituency power.” No. He doesn’t operate that way.
And when we do we betray that we are not of His Kingdom but our own.
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More of my writings on the “Quartet of the Vulnerable” in this article “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” by clicking here.
Also, here is a helpful piece from Stephen Baumann of World Relief talking about the Quartet of the Vulnerable in scripture.
