“2 For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome,
a great king over all the earth.”
Psalm 47:2
When you hear the word “king” what do you think of? Christians might think of King David in the Old Testament, leaping and praising God as he led the Arc of the Covenant back into Jerusalem. Of course there was King Solomon, his son, praying for wisdom on the night of his inauguration. Camelot and King Arthur captured the imagination of my generation and his struggle with forming a democracy and how to deal with Queen Genève’s affair. When my mother-in-law died, my Indian doctor gave me the picture from the end of “First Knight” when Arthur’s body is on a raft floating out on water and a burning arrow is shot to release his remains to the universe.
Whether you think of Mulan and the Chinese emperor or Genghis Khan or some other historical person, we can all agree that kings faced challenges and needed wisdom and eventually died. Psalm 47 compares God to a king not of an empire but of the whole earth. He is the king of all people and all nations. He is “most high,” “king of kings,” and “Lord of Lords.” Government is his responsibility but he has a long-range plan of building the kingdom of heaven and we have a say as to whether we will be his subjects. Authority is in his hands but he uses it with our best interest in mind. He has all wisdom so we can trust his guidance. And he will not die. As Christians we believe that to be absent from our earthly body is to be present with him in our heavenly bodies. That is a comfort when dealing with death.
Think of a king you admire and then thank God that God himself is so much more “awesome”, “a great king over all the whole earth.” Blessings.
On the Way to Wonder 