Psalm 62:9 — Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.

I suppose I’m getting crotchety in my old age. In the morning Myra and I have one of our local TV stations switched on, mostly to provide us with traffic and weather information. Lead stories today were the awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists (better known as the Oscars), the trial of an Olympic Athlete in South Africa for the murder of his girlfriend, and the impact of the latest winter storm on flights from our local airport.
And, oh yes … There was a quick mention of Russian troops marching into the Crimea in Ukraine.
I don’t know if it really is just me, or if there is a true decline into trivia. And if there is a decline into the trivial, does it matter?
The verse from Psalm 62 seems to suggest that really not much has changed. “Look,” it says, “it doesn’t matter whether people have a low position in society, or a high position. In all their concerns, when you weigh them up, they don’t amount to much.”
Psalm 62 is a wonderful declaration of faith, created by a man going through something really difficult. There is no direct evidence, but there’s a tradition that David wrote it at one of the lowest points in his life, the rebellion by his beloved son Absalom. It’s called the “only” psalm because of the way the Hebrew word is used again and again — six times — though it is not always so obvious in translation.
The bottom line for David was that only God can be trusted and that men are only men.
So how about the trivia I complain about. Does it matter? Well I think it does. You see, I think that in reality David was being a little hard on some of his friends. He had some great men around him — Nathan the priest and Zadok, the priests, and Ittai the Gittite and Hushai the Architecture, who stayed true when trouble came calling and the storms were blowing.
The Romans had a word for it — “gravitas” — a word meaning “seriousness, sobriety of character or behavior”. It’s a virtue that is increasingly lacking from our society. As David had it, “men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.” And why does it matter? It matters because character is the foundation of faith. A faith built on weak character is a house built on sand and I fear that we live in an age when storms will come and many faith houses will be swept away.