The Devotional

Papa “J” says

What does it mean to have an upright heart? One; gladness in the LORD. Two; a joyful, righteous voice and, Three; surrounding mercy. But the heart bent on wickedness; many sorrows. Psalm 32:10-11

Last evening I was a member of the Color Guard for one of our departments fallen firefighters. He was an active member who drove and operated the companies Ladder Vehicle. Because I am ex-military I took great comfort in the participation of this event. The firefighter had a history of heart trouble and had a pacemaker implant, so his death was not related to a fire incident in particular, but rather lifestyle, he was in his late sixties. Twelve of us were assigned as the color guard, but nearly fifty percent of the company, about thirty-five uniformed men and women were present. This is my observation: We were all in one room, a conference room with a medium size table and ten chairs around the table with another six along the walls. In the middle of the table was a Bible. Ever so often someone would slide it in front of their eyes and make a comment. The Bible was opened to Proverbs 31:10-31. People of the world do not know virtue, nor are they willing to learn. Their words were cruel and offensive as they sat and commented on the various godly attributes of a woman who has her spiritual priorities in the right order. I wanted them to stop, so I opened my mouth and said. “she is a godly woman” and stop they did. Some even got up from the table and moved elsewhere.

A Look at the Psalms

Psalm 2:4-6 God is not a human in that He should laugh as we do over the sin of any nation. The Hebrew word here does not render the word “laugh” as we might consider it. More to be expected is that God considers that the vain effort of mankind to plot against the LORD, as the earlier verses reveal, to be a humorous effort of mankind to use his strength to try and break away from the strong cord or grip that God has on His created world.

The Hebrew word (Shachatsowm) also describes the long suffering of the LORD to give mankind time to prove that there is no power that can overthrow the Kingdom of God. That God struts about in heaven as a coach might in a sporting event when his team is leading by a large margin, abiding His time for the final crushing blow to subdue the opponent and secure victory.

The bottom line is that the Hebrew (Sachaq) is the word for laugh and it is not used, in any passage related to God relationship to people, in other words – God does not laugh at you or me for our actions that are an abomination to Him and He takes no pleasure (Ezekiel 33:11) in the death of anyone who's name is erased from the Lamb's Book of life. Exodus 32:32-33; Psalm 69:28 and Isaiah 4:3.