‘Of kings and emperors’
by Sal Huckel
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No one is like you, Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power (Jeremiah 10:6).
Read Jeremiah 10:6–16
This week, my family and I visited the ‘ROME: Empire, Power, People’ exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. My children are better educated than I was at their age, so they explained to me the significance of the statues and buildings erected in honour of emperors. Apparently, there were two ways to cement your legacy as an emperor:
- Win a war and add a province to the Empire.
- Construct a public building – a palace or a temple with your name on it (preferably both).
Bad news, emperors! ‘No one is like you, Lord; you are great and your name is mighty in power … Among all the wise leaders of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you’ (Jeremiah 10:6,7).
As if that’s not enough: ‘They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols.’
However we feel about the ‘King’s Speech 2.0’ (as we hear and maybe even cheer for King Charles’ recent rhetoric in the USA), we know that our great and almighty God made the earth by his power! One cannot add to these words, so let’s read them together (Jeremiah 10:12,13):
But God made the earth by his power;
he founded the world by his wisdom
and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar;
he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.
He sends lightning with the rain
and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
Friends! This is our God!
We pray the final verse of the hymn ‘The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended’ by John Ellerton (1870):
‘So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never like earth’s proud empires, pass away. Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever till all thy creatures own thy sway.’ Lord, thank you for adding me to the people of your inheritance (verse 16). My great and almighty God through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Sal is the wife of Matthew, pastor at Moorabbin–Dandenong Lutheran Church and assistant bishop of the LCA Vic–Tas District. They are blessed with six children who all love and serve the Lord in their different walks of life, from high school to post-grad. Sal is currently studying a master’s degree in counselling practice. She loves writing, speaking and walking to the beach at any opportunity.
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