November 8

Today's Reading: Psalm 58:1-11

Read the passage and answer these two questions:

1. What doe this passage teach me about God and His attributes?
2. How should that understanding about the nature of God impact the way that I live my life?

My observations from Psalm 57:
Although we've certainly seen it before throughout our readings in the Psalms, I want to focus on God's mercy this morning. Here is this Psalm David pleads for God to be merciful to Him. Although we often differentiate between mercy and grace (and they are certainly different), the Hebrew verb David uses here is translated as both mercy or grace in the Old Testament. That verb comes from a root word that means "to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior". That reminds us that God is merciful, not because we deserve it, but merely because that is who He is.

That means that I must never view God's mercy as something I deserve or that God "owes" me. I need to be grateful every moment of every day that God does not give me what is "fair" or what I deserve.