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Mortal Nations


The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; by their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. The Lord is known by his acts of justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.  The wicked go down to the realm of the dead, all the nations that forget God.   But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish. Arise, Lord, do not let mortals triumph; let the nations be judged in your presence. Strike them with terror, Lord; let the nations know they are only mortal. (Psalm 9:15-20) 
          I may come back to another part of this psalm tomorrow, but this morning, this is the passage for which an idea came to mind. Normally, we think of humans and animals as being mortal. We die. Nations last hundreds of years and we don’t think of them dying, so we don’t think of them as being mortal. C. S. Lewis mentioned the idea of nations being mortal in Weight of Glory. This passage may be where he got it.
     At its core, a nation is a system and as such, it has some benefits to the people who work with it. It can be an effective tool. The problem is that often, the tool becomes the club used to impose the system on the people. The mortal then seeks to control something that it cannot comprehend: the immortal human being, whose body may die, but it is a seed from which grows our immortal selves.
          Any nation that turns its back on God fails its people, and they all do. Part of it is because the leadership of a nation tends to be, by necessity, separated from the majority of the people. Washington, D.C. is a long way away from Smith River, CA; Bumble Bee, AZ; Erie, PA, or even Zephyrhills, FL. The people in Washington can’t know what the people in those places want or need. They are too far away to truly govern those people. The national government must rely on a system that may or may not work for those people.
         That’s the cool thing about God. He’s immanent. He can and does get involved in our lives, and knows what is best for us. He is also immortal, and therefore understands what immortals need, something a mortal government cannot do. Not only do the governments need to recognize their limitations, we need to recognize their limitations, too.

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