We need leaders everywhere don’t we – in our homes, schools, businesses, governments, the Church. We can never overestimate the need for good leaders. At the same time, we ought always to remember that people are people, and they come with blind-spots and prejudices and weaknesses. At our best, we are not perfect. This led the Psalmist to write, “Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation” (vs. 3).
The truth of matter is that human beings need God, leaders and followers alike. People can, and will, let us down. We most likely have let others down, from time to time. It is not wise to overvalue any person’s leadership. Support leadership, yes. Believe in our leaders, yes. Pray for our leaders, yes. Just, don’t think more highly of them than we ought to think. After all, the psalmist says, our leaders will not always be our leaders. In time, “his spirit departs, he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (vs. 4).
The psalmist calls us to put our trust in God, the God “who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry” (vss. 6-7). These words raise God to His proper place in history. It is when human beings lean on human beings for the most important things in life that things go wrong, especially when they forget God, and lean on their own understanding.
I remember a story about a bishop in the early 20th century. He announced from his pulpit and in the periodical he edited, that heavier-than-air flight was both impossible and contrary to the will of God. Oops. Bishop Wright had two sons, who apparently didn’t get the message, Orville and Wilbur! As I’ve think about this event, I am reminded that people many times, gets things wrong.
Consider these things from wonderful leaders, scientist, and thinkers. In 1923 physicist, Robert Milliken wrote, “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”
In 1946, producer Darryl Zanuck (20th Century Fox) said, “Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” In 1943 IBM’s Thomas Watson said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” In 1981 Bill Gates said, “640K ought to be enough memory for anybody.” In 1865 the Boston Post wrote, “Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”
In the season of Lent, let’s remember that man is not God. Sometimes men get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. We need to be careful. It is our God in whom we should have absolute trust. “How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob; whose hope is in the LORD his God” (vs. 5).
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