God is in Heaven and He Does What He Pleases
T o paraphrase Psalm 115:3 , God is in heaven and he does what he pleases. I think many people have a problem with that verse because it makes God seem distant. It gives us a picture of God in which he seems to have no concern for the problems of mankind. But when we consider the context in which it appears, it gives us a better image than that. The psalmist talks about the heathen asking where our God is. They point to the idols they worship and say here is our god, where is yours? To that the psalmist answered that God is in heaven, but he goes a step farther, saying that God does what he pleases. Unlike the idols that these people made with their hands, God does as he pleases. We can take a stick of wood, shape it into an animal, stick it on a shelf and bow to it as a god. If we decide to move to a different house, we can take the god with us and put it on a shelf in a different house. The god has no control over which shelf it sits on, but the living God does as he pleases. Where i...