Over the years, I’ve been called different names, some not so complimentary. As a kid, I added a few extra pounds around the old tum-tum. Hence, some neighbor boys nicknamed me ‘hunker’. I’d earned that moniker but never shined to it. A family member called me ‘punk. Thanks!

In a church going through a ferocious civil war, a new staff member called me, the senior pastor, a ‘primadonna’ at an elder’s meeting that ended poorly, to say the least. Thanks again! Earned? I’m not sure. But he thought so.

To his credit, years later, this former colleague phoned me to apologize and ask for forgiveness. He has endured much the same treatment and realizes the severity of his betrayal. A tad reluctantly, I did forgive him, noting his courage and humility in contacting me.

One name I’ve never been called is ‘fool’. At least not to my face. That I know of. Reading Psalms 53, we encounter that term. The ‘fool’. In what sense? Financially? Acquiring debt that can never be paid back? Living an immoral, reckless lifestyle? All such would be foolish, but there’s a different slant here. The fool disregards God, shuns Him and His ways, thinking that he can squeak into some decent afterlife, if there even is one, by being a ‘good’ person. All by his own steam.

Psalm 53: 1–“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” The fool denies God’s existence. Probably posits some kind of natural evolution that produces all that there is by chance and fate. More karma than Christ. More bizarre explanations than the truth of the Bible. Foolish to discount the Lord and think that man is the focus of everything when God is life’s hinge.

Nothing remains outside His hands. The fool thinks so, but the fact is that they’re wrong. No outsmarting God or His Word. No avoiding His claims on all of life. Foolish to think otherwise.

I’m glad the word ‘fool’ doesn’t apply to me, at least not in the Psalm 53 way. For I believe in Jesus and depend upon Him, trying as best I can (often not very well) to live for Him and follow His ways. But don’t look to me as an example to live by. You shouldn’t and hopefully don’t.

You know where to focus. Right. On God. The Father, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Quite the heavenly dream team! Partnership forever. It would be foolish to look anywhere else, wouldn’t it?

Lord Jesus, you are my all in all forever. Amen.