Deal with your servant according to your love and teach me your decrees. – Psalm 119:124

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 26, 2019): Psalm 119: 97-144

Charles Dickens wrote “Oliver Twist,” which was first published as a serial, from 1837 – 1839. The novel has become known for its realistic or unromanticized portrayal of criminal life as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of many of the orphans living during the era in which Dickens was writing. In 1948, a movie was released telling the Dickens story starring John Howard Davies in the role of Oliver. One of the more memorable scenes from the film is of Oliver pleading for more food, and subsequently having his pleas ignored.

I have to admit that it is that scene that comes to mind as I listen to news reports regarding the United States government arguing over the fate of children crossing the Southern border of the country. We have differing stories about the conditions present in the facilities where the children, who are essentially orphans, are being kept. Provocative images of “children being marched like little soldiers or prisoners” are repeated by Democratic Presidential hopefuls. And the bottom line of the problem is the way that we consider the children. If they are just a means to an end, or if they are nothing more than a problem to be solved, then we will deal with them in a certain way; enter the story of Oliver Twist who never seemed to be more than a means to an end. But if we deal with these children according to our capacity to love, then the situation would be very different.

The plea of the Psalmist is that God would deal with us according to his capacity to love. Not according to his righteousness, to which we can never measure up. And not according to the problem that we present to his plan for this world, and there is no doubt that we present a significant barrier to God’s vision of what this world might look like. Instead, he says, at least in this place in the Psalms, that God would deal with us according to his love.

Love changes everything. In Oliver Twist, what is evident throughout the story is the lack of love present as various characters try to use the children to get what they want. Children are simply things to be tolerated or tools to be used. But the needs of the children are the last thing on the minds of those who deal with Oliver and his friends. The presence of love would have changed the Dickens story. The situation on the southern border would also be changed by love. And our lives should be shaped by it. We who have been dealt with according to God’s love for us should be a conduit of that love to others, even those who might be considered to be “least of these.” And the children are definitely, at least politically, “the least of these.”    

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 119:145-176