Baby Birds and Power

What does it mean to be powerful? Thinking of it a different way, who would you put on a list of powerful people in the world today, and what is it that qualifies them for that list?

One of today's morning psalms, Psalm 147, describes God as "abundant in power." There is mention of God controlling weather, and that's certainly sounds powerful to me. But most of the attributes in today's verses don't fit so neatly into the qualities I associate with power. God gathers outcasts, binds up wounds, lifts up the downtrodden, feeds animals, and hears baby birds when they cry. Sounds a little like St. Francis, and that's not a name that comes immediately to mind when I consider the topic of power.

I'm reasonably well versed in the Bible, and so I know that the Apostle Paul writes how the Lord said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." But that doesn't quite fit into the understanding of power I learn from living in our world. Which I suppose is largely the point.

For some reason, I've never heard this morning's psalm in quite the manner I did today. Clearly God's strange notions about power are not some New Testament innovation that shows up with a cross. God's apparently had some rather odd notions about power for a long time.

Seems a strange way for a god to act. Of course that sentence might make a rather catchy title for the story of Jesus.

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