Be slow to write off the imperfect ...

General Dwight Eisenhower said: "In my experience with Blackie [an old army horse] and earlier with allegedly incompetent recruits at Camp Colt, is rooted my enduring conviction that far too often we write off a backward child as hopeless, a clumsy animal as worthless, a worn-out field as beyond restoration. This we do largely out of our own lack of willingness to take the time and spend the effort to prove ourselves wrong: to prove that a difficult boy can become a fine man, that an animal can respond to training, that the field can regain its fertility."

Why do the nations rage? Thoughts on Psalm 2.

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
Psalm 2, verse 1

Many nations openly rage and plot against the Lord and His people, and execute their plots with a will. How should we respond?

Am I willing to accept God's solution?  Am I willing to accept God's patience with the world as it is until He deals with it? Am I willing to persevere and do what I am called to do in my small corner? 

If Christians live as Christ did - with our eyes always upon God - God may choose to dissipate some of the rage and plotting around us. He will surely use us to bring helping hands and His message of peace and salvation to a significant part of struggling humanity.

The person who believes in Jesus Christ has no reason to rage or plot (though we often do) because God has decreed the outcome. vv 7-9

We can serve the Lord with holy fear, and rejoice with trembling, today and forever. v 11 Despite the rage and plots of mankind God will have His way. And we will dwell with Him in a new place full of peace and freedom; free of rage and plotting.