on our side

I watched an interview with a famous actor recently who is an atheist. His basis for rejecting the possibility of a God is that to him the world looks like no one cares. He sees pain and evil as proof that there couldn’t possibly be a God who is love. My reaction is to imagine a world where God actually didn’t care, and to think how much different things would be. My life experience is full of times when God’s love was evident.

I thought of that man again this morning as I read my devotions, because Psalm 124 raises that same question. The first four verses of that Psalm go like this: “If the Lord had not been on our side— let Israel say— if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us; the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.”

It seems an odd Psalm to associate with Advent, but I think the main question is quite relevant: What if God hadn’t been on our side? What if he decided to wash his hands of us? What if he opted out of the struggle we have with Satan and unbelievers and left the world to do to us whatever it wishes? Or worse yet, if he abandoned me to my sin?

The reference to raging waters of course immediately brings to mind Noah, and how God’s people were miraculously saved during the flood. That story reveals God to us as a God who saves, a God who would never leave us or forsake us. Our God goes to extreme lengths to restore us to him. 

If the Lord had not been on our side, he certainly would never have sacrificed his son. But God is on our side, so he called his people and led them, and fought for them against the corruption of sin and the attacks of sinners. And he promised a Savior, and urged the people to watch and wait. One day the rescue would be complete. 

So I watch, and I wait. As it should, it all gets jumbled in my head. Christmas is coming, the Savior has come, Jesus will come again. I and so many others take this annual walk in the sandals of God’s people who lived before the first Christmas because nothing else grounds us in our true hope like this story that begins with a manger and some shepherds and a virgin birth. 

What if God hadn’t been on our side? The flood would wash over me, every day, and then finally when I die. Hope would have left the same day Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden. But Hallelujah, the promised Savior comes.