power

A God Who Sees the Silenced

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A Devotional Reflection on Tamar, Justice, and Jesus

In Genesis 38, we encounter one of Scripture’s most uncomfortable stories. Tamar is twice widowed, bound by custom, and dependent on the integrity of men who hold power over her life. Onan uses her body but refuses her future. Judah delays justice and hides behind respectability. Tamar is left invisible—until she refuses to stay that way.

This story unsettles us because it exposes a truth we would rather avoid: religious systems can protect privilege while abandoning the vulnerable.

Onan’s sin and Judah’s hypocrisy

Onan’s failure is not simply sexual; it is moral. He takes intimacy while rejecting responsibility. Judah’s failure is quieter but just as deadly. He preserves his public image while postponing Tamar’s dignity and security. Together, they represent a pattern Scripture repeatedly condemns: using power to benefit oneself while denying justice to others.

Centuries later, Jesus names this pattern directly.

Jesus and the exposure of hypocrisy

Jesus speaks with particular sharpness to those who claim moral authority but neglect justice:

“You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23)

Jesus’s teaching does not reject moral seriousness—it reorders it. What matters most is not outward compliance but inward truth, not control but compassion. Like the prophets before him, Jesus confronts systems that police behavior while excusing exploitation.

Tamar’s story belongs squarely in this tradition.

Tamar: dignity reclaimed

Tamar does something astonishing. She acts—at great personal risk—to force Judah to confront the truth. When Judah realizes what he has done, he confesses:

“She is more righteous than I.”

This is one of the Bible’s most radical reversals. The woman shamed by society is declared righteous. The man protected by status is exposed. Justice does not come from the powerful doing the right thing voluntarily; it comes because God sides with the wronged and brings truth to light.

Jesus continues this same reversal. He consistently restores dignity to those denied it—women, the poor, the sexually shamed, the socially excluded. He does not excuse sin, but he refuses to confuse sin with vulnerability.

Power, sexuality, and our modern world

Tamar’s story speaks directly to our time.

  • Power: It warns against systems—religious, political, or relational—that benefit from silence. When those with authority delay justice, God is not neutral.
  • Sexuality: It challenges any ethic that focuses on controlling bodies while ignoring consent, care, and consequence. Scripture condemns sexuality that consumes without covenant.
  • Dignity: Tamar reminds us that dignity is not granted by society; it is affirmed by God. Even when voices are dismissed, God hears.

Jesus embodies this truth. He exposes hypocrisy not to humiliate, but to heal. He insists that holiness without justice is hollow, and morality without mercy is false.

A word for today

This story invites us to ask hard questions of ourselves and our communities:

  • Whose dignity is being delayed in the name of order?
  • Where do we benefit from silence rather than truth?
  • Do our moral conversations protect the vulnerable—or the comfortable?

The gospel answer is clear: God’s justice always restores dignity. Tamar’s courage and Jesus’s teaching call us to a faith that does more than look righteous—it acts justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God.

Closing prayer

God of the unseen and unheard,
Open our eyes to hypocrisy within us.
Give us courage to name injustice,
Grace to protect dignity,
And hearts aligned with Jesus,
Who lifts the lowly and calls truth into the light.
Amen.

Power reimagined: From Domination to Devotion.

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Power is one of the most misunderstood and misused forces in our world. We see it daily—in politics, wealth, influence, military strength, and social dominance. Power is often defined as the ability to control outcomes, silence opposition, or secure advantage. Yet when we turn to Scripture, we discover a radically different vision of power—one that confronts our assumptions and invites us into a transformed way of living.

Psalm 2, Isaiah 49:13–23, and Matthew 18:1–14 each speak about power, but they do so from distinct angles. Together, they reveal that God’s power is not exercised through fear or coercion, but through faithfulness, compassion, and care for the least.

Psalm 2: Power That Exposes False Authority

Psalm 2 opens with a striking image: nations raging, rulers conspiring, and powers of the world attempting to throw off God’s authority. It is a portrait that feels uncannily familiar. Human power, when detached from humility, tends to resist accountability. It seeks autonomy without responsibility and control without justice.

Yet the psalm does not respond with panic. God is not threatened by the noise of empire. Instead, God’s sovereignty exposes the fragility of power built on pride and fear. The psalm reminds us that authority rooted in domination is ultimately unstable. True power belongs not to those who shout the loudest or hoard the most, but to the One who governs with righteousness and calls leaders to serve with wisdom and reverence.

In our day, Psalm 2 challenges both leaders and citizens. It asks us where we place our trust and whom we believe ultimately holds the future. It warns against confusing force with legitimacy and reminds us that power without justice is already unraveling.

Isaiah 49: Power That Remembers the Forgotten

Isaiah 49 shifts the conversation. Here, power is not expressed through conquest but through consolation. God speaks to a people who feel abandoned and asks a tender question: “Can a woman forget her nursing child?” Even if that were possible, God declares, “I will not forget you.”

This is power as faithfulness. God’s strength is revealed in memory, in presence, in the refusal to abandon the vulnerable. The passage envisions a world turned upside down—where kings become caregivers and queens serve as nurturers. Power bows low. Authority is redefined as responsibility for the weak.

In our world, where refugees are dismissed, the elderly are neglected, and the marginalized are treated as expendable, this vision is deeply countercultural. Isaiah insists that God’s power is measured not by dominance but by devotion to those society overlooks. Any system that forgets the suffering has misunderstood power at its core.

Matthew 18: Power in Smallness and Care

Jesus brings the conversation to its sharpest point in Matthew 18. When the disciples ask who is greatest, Jesus does not offer a strategy for success. He places a child among them and says that greatness looks like humility, dependence, and trust.

More than that, Jesus issues a stark warning: harming or neglecting “the little ones” is a grave offense. Power that exploits or ignores the vulnerable stands under judgment. Then comes the parable of the lost sheep—a shepherd leaving ninety-nine to seek the one who is lost. This is not efficient power. It is not practical power. It is personal, attentive, and relentless love.

In our day, this teaching confronts cultures that value productivity over people and numbers over names. Jesus reveals a power that stops for the one, listens to the small voice, and refuses to write anyone off as insignificant.

Power for Our Time

Together, these Scriptures call us to examine how we understand and exercise power. They ask difficult questions:

  • Do we equate power with control or with care?
  • Do we admire strength that dominates, or strength that protects?
  • Do our institutions reflect God’s concern for the least, or human hunger for status?

God’s power does not crush rebellion with brute force, forget suffering in the name of progress, or measure worth by influence. God’s power restores, remembers, and rescues.

For us today, following Christ means resisting the temptation to grasp power as the world defines it. Instead, we are invited to practice power through humility, advocacy, compassion, and faithful love—especially toward those with the least voice.

In a world obsessed with being first, God calls us to notice the child, seek the lost sheep, and remember the forgotten. This is the power that endures. This is the power that heals. And this is the power to which we are called.