"Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles." – Psalm 2:3

Today's Scripture Reading (July 29, 2025): Psalm 2 & 3

A decade ago, my family rented a house for our summer break, which we called "the big house." The house had room for us all. Included among the guests were my parents, both my children and their spouses, and the three grandchildren we had at the time (today we have five, but the two youngest had not yet been born). The rooms in the house were on two massive levels. The house had been built into a hill, and the lower level featured a swimming pool with a waterfall on one end. And so, we began the summer with great expectations.

Enter an overprotective grandpa, me. My grandchildren were all under four years of age, and my nightmare was that one of them would fall down the long staircase that ran between the levels, or drown unsupervised in the pool. I wanted everyone to ensure that the doors leading out to the pool were always latched and that the entrance to the stairs was always blocked. I probably shouldn't have been so upset, because the kids were great, and I don't remember them ever wanting to be near the pool when no one was there, or that they ever went near the stairs to traverse between the levels of the house. But that didn't stop me from worrying. Maybe if they were a little older, they might have thought that all their grandpa wanted to do was to spoil their fun. The old man was too old to have fun himself, and so he just wanted to make sure that no one else had any fun either. It wouldn't be the truth, but sometimes that's how we feel about rules.

Sometimes, that is the way we feel about God. All he wants to do is give us so many rules that it stops us from having any fun. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. He wants us to have fun and enjoy the life that he has given to us, but he also wants us to be safe. The rules are guidelines that ensure we can have fun and stay safe, but they also ensure that we don't impinge on anyone else's fun, keeping the neighbor we love just as secure as we are.

It was the cry of the nations around Israel. As a result, they conspired against God and hoped to throw off the chains and break the shackles that are keeping them subservient. However, the truth was that keeping them under the thumb of a deity was never the intention of what the nations interpreted as the chains; the purpose was to keep them, and us, safe as we journey through our time on the Earth.   

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 4 & 5