Psalm 114:7 calls the earth to "tremble before the Lord," but I fear his words are falling on a lot of deaf ears in our culture. We are rugged individualist and we don't tremble before anything. Our heroes are the stuff of the one-man shows of Batman, Iron Man, and Superman, and our subculture anthem is "I did it my way." We don't do trembling very well. Real men don't tremble; they strut their stuff and they flex their mussels, and beware should you ever get in their way.

Some times God is such an inconvenience. He calls us to a rugged self-understanding that reveals when we are in our toughest disguise, its still a disguise. We think humility is for the weak and meek. God says it is for the strong and determined. Egypt was strong and determined; they didn't have time for trembling. They were too busy being Egypt to bother with God.

So it was that God took those who did tremble before Him and moved them out of bondage, and gave them a future of freedom, a future that called them to know that if they wanted to remain in the place of freedom they needed to live with such a sense of the Holy, such a sense of the otherness of God, such a sense of the sacred that they would never take God too lightly, but tremble before Him in the glorious wonders of worship and faithfulness.

Just this week I heard God referred to as "the man upstairs." No disrespect was intended but to reduce God down to this level doesn't reveal a sense of the Holy, the sacred, the otherness of God.

To tremble is to show deep respect and worshipful recognition. It is to remember who you are and never to forget from whence you come.