Psalm 82 - Waking Up

May 18, 2025

(Another too long for email - lots of photos today)

Today is a simple reflection on waking up using a series of photographs from a 40-minute stretch on Saturday morning. I photographed this simple sunrise every minute from 6:05 until 6:45 yesterday morning with the camera on a tripod so it would be the same framing throughout. Here’s a short 40-second video of all of them together showing the world beginning to wake up.

All of the photos are in a gallery in the end after Scout’s photos if you want to see them individually. There wasn’t anything fancy about the scene this morning - there weren’t any unique cloud formations, no unique weather, no bench. Just a simple scene of a sunrise on a clear morning. The world waking up. All it took was a camera, a tripod, patience, and a program to bring them all together.

In a similar way, Psalm 82 is simple as well. It is only 8 verses and is pretty direct in what it says. It is essentially a courtroom scene with God as the presiding judge and the rulers of the people (and possibly the whole of the people) on trial. Here’s what the Psalm says (with a few Ed notes in italics)

Setting
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods (another translation here is judges - same word)
he holds judgment:
God to the ones “on trial”:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
To the courtroom as a whole:
They (judges/people) have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
God to the ones “on trial”
I say, “You are gods,
children of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,
and fall like any prince.”
Conclusion
Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!

Like the video above showing this part of the world waking up, this Psalm is also about the same (in a more metaphorical sense). It is about waking up to how God calls people to live. These are the things in the Bible that are most often used as benchmarks for faithfulness - unjust justice, partiality to the wicked (or heedless in Fischer’s way of translating), justice for the weak and the orphan, rights of the “lowly and destitue”, rescuing the week and the needy, and protecting them from the hand of the wicked/heedless. This is the same sense of the oft-quoted verse in Micah 6:8 when responding to the question of what God has shown us to do... To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

What I hear in this Psalm is God telling those in the courtroom to simply, “wake up.”

What God is asking of us is simple really…wake up.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

PS - How it started // How it’s going