We praise you, God, we praise you, for your Name is near; people tell of your wonderful deeds. You say, “I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge with equity. When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm. (Psalm 75:1-3)

I feel like I’ve been saying this over and over again for the past 3 years. But it sure feels like the earth and all its people are quaking, doesn’t it? Still? COVID has exposed so many deep faults and rifts in our world that now continue to fracture into uncertainty, restlessness, division, fear, anger, and all sorts of other things. Our institutions feel fragile and continue to shift under our feet. Our relationships and community may feel oddly distant or fragile too. None of us really have any gas left in the tank, but the world we live in keeps asking for more.

We need saving. Somehow we just can’t do it ourselves. We cannot secure our own lives or communities. We cannot control the fate of our institutions. We cannot quell our own restlessness and loneliness no matter the temptations or distractions we turn to. And we just can’t catch a peaceful break in which to rest up and be refreshed. God help us. And I mean that quite truly: as people who cannot save themselves and are going to have to rely on someone else to do it—God will need to be the one to step in and help us.

In Psalm 75 we hear God speak. Amidst so much injustice, God declares: “it is I who judge with equity.” Amidst so much that feels apocalyptic, as if the end is somehow drawing near, God reminds us: “I choose the appointed time.” And when we are simply shaken and shaking in a world that feels like its coming undone, God reminds us: “It is I who hold [the earth’s] pillars firm.”

Of course, the other side of those declaration of God’s work over this world is the implication that we are not the judges, not the ones who get to know or choose the times, nor the ones who hold the world or our lives together. No: this is God’s work, not ours. We cannot save ourselves. Only God can do that.

Much of this psalm speaks out against the boastful, the proud, and the wicked who think they can do it all themselves. By their power, their might, their control. But God says no. He bursts our bubble and reminds us that we never could hold it all together ourselves. We have always needed a saviour. We have always needed a God to hold us and help us.

The invitation is for us to humbly submit and to give thanks: because if the weight of the world feels like too heavy a burden to bear, that’s because it is. It’s time to turn it over to God and let him be God today. May he come quickly to save us.