Increasingly, we are a wounded and wary people; backs pressed against a wall; hackles raised; senses always on high alert. We snarl in pain and bare our teeth in warning. We pledge allegiance to a pack who promises protection.

We’ve learned through bad experience to question the motives of everyone. What’s in it for them? Whose agenda are they promoting? Can I trust them with what dearly matters to me? Probably not.

Most of us want to do what’s right. We hope to leave our world more wholesome and healthy than we found it. We aim to live with integrity and walk in the truth and the light. But how can we tell who is telling the truth? Who is right? What is the truth?

And it’s into this suspicious, seething, and anxious age that we’ve been born. On purpose, God birthed you and me into this wounded and weary world in which we both now walk.

This is the time, the place, and the people deemed best for us by our Heavenly Father. It’s His world, and our world too, and together with him and each other we go.

“What is truth and who can know it?” The principalities and powers put forth this question as wisdom. But it’s a temptation that leads to evil. Wisdom from above asks not “What is truth?” but rather “Who is Truth?”

The reason you and I were born into the world is, like Jesus before Pilate, to love and bear witness to the Truth. Who is Truth? He is the rightful king of all.

My purpose as a child of God is to image the faithful lovingkindness of my king; to image his manifold and great mercy; to rejoice in his just and life-giving statues; to bear witness to, and represent, his righteous rule over all the earth. To this King alone will I give my allegiance.

In love and honor of this king – my King – may I go out with great joy and justly tend to his world and his people.

Shalom as you go today.

Kim