The God Who Helps – October 28, 2022

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.
Deuteronomy 10:17,18

The God Who Helps

When I was in grade school, and teams were being picked for kickball, basketball, or baseball during recess, I regularly witnessed what I think is the typical playground experience when choosing teams: the captains always chose the strongest first and made their way down to the weakest. They chose the individuals whose talent or skill could provide the most help to the team.

God doesn’t do the same thing. Time and again in the Bible, when God chooses the individuals, he will associate with, he regularly chooses the individuals who need the most help or feel the most invisible. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow,” Moses reminded Israel.

There are people who have had to walk through life without father, whether that father left by their own choice or was taken from them by death. There are many people who walk through life as a widow, living each day without the comfort of companionship they formerly enjoyed. There are many people who aren’t fatherless or widowed yet walk through each day feeling rejected, unlovable, or invisible.

But we are never invisible to God. This is the God who chose Israel—the smallest nation—to bring the Savior into the world. This is the God who chose Moses—not the greatest speaker or bravest man—to deliver Israel from slavery. This is the God who chose David—an afterthought even in the minds of his own family—to defeat a giant and lead as a king. This is the God who chose to save all of us, though he is very familiar with all of our sins, by forgiving those sins entirely through the perfect life and sacrificial death of the one truly “good” person—Jesus Christ.

God doesn’t choose the people who are better than most. He chooses people who need him the most.

Prayer:
Gracious God, thank you for helping me so completely and perfectly through my Savior, Jesus. Amen.