Welcome to His Encouragement Thursday! I don’t know about you, but Thursdays are my struggle day of the week. By Thursday, I have already been working hard at school and at home, and I just wish it would hurry up and be Friday already. LOL! I definitely need a little extra Jesus time on Thursdays.
Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.
Psalm 146:3-4 (ESV)
Hamlet is the greatest Shakespearean play. I’ve heard it called the “Thinking Man’s” play, and I feel that is an apt description. There are SO many moments in the storyline where Hamlet discusses a life topic that really gets the reader/play go-er to stop and think about reality.
In act 4, scene 3 of Hamlet, Claudius attempts to discover where Hamlet hid Polonius’s dead body. Hamlet tells Claudius that Polonius is at supper. This shocks Claudius and he asks, “At supper! Where?” Hamlet replies that it’s not a matter of Polonius eating, but that he is being eaten. He is becoming worm’s food. Hamlet attempts to explain (in a parable of sorts) how death is a great equalizer. Polonius was a “great” man — he held a high position of power in the Danish court. But now he is nothing more than worm’s food. Polonius’s potential now is to one day become food for a worm that will be used as bait. One day, as bait, this worm will be eaten by a fish that will be fished by a lowly fisherman who will take the fish home to provide food for his family. One day, the highly esteemed Polonius will reside within the bellies of a lowly fisherman’s gut. In this, Hamlet illustrates not just that death is an equalizer — because we ALL do die — but that the importance we humans place on hierarchy is quite ridiculous.
When I read Psalm 146:3-4, I could not help but think of Hamlet and his fish speech. We humans tend to put our faith in people. We think that some guy will save us. Some government program will save us. If we just vote for this one person, things will change and life will be better. But this is a lie. And this goes against God’s commandments. Commandment #1 is: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:2-3). When you put your faith in a mere mortal, you make that mortal a god and this directly breaks God’s first commandment.
The prophet Isaiah makes this point as well in 2:22 (ESV) — “Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?” This is one of Hamlet’s points. WHY do we elevate people? Why do we regard people as something big and important? People are just people, and they die. They become worm’s food. The elevation is arbitrary and mostly meaningless. When we uphold others, give them power, and make them “kings,” we get tyranny and a loss of rights. We get a class system where one group believes they are better than another. We get men who believe they are gods and then do things that hurt others.
Human leaders are mere men. No human prince can save you. Stop putting your faith and trust in people who want power. They will never have your best interest at heart. Only God has your best interest at heart. In Psalm 146:3-4, we are told that man’s plans are meaningless. But in Jeremiah 29:11, we are told that God has a plan for us, and it is the only plan that matters because He is the ONLY Prince who will ever matter! Put your trust in GOD not man.
The Christian Fiction Girl 