Why Do the Mean People Win?

Asaph led the singers in God's house in Jerusalem,
and he wrote songs for them to sing.
(Most of his songs were glad.
This one starts out grumpy.)

And Asaph's heart had gone sour.
Every day on his way to God's house
he passed the proud men of the city.

Their faces were round and shiny.
Their tables groaned with food.
They wore their pride like a gold necklace
and their cruelty like a coat.
They shoved the poor out of the road
and laughed at heaven.
"How would God know?" they said.
"Does the Most High even see?"

Nothing bad ever seemed to happen to them.
They never got sick. They never got caught.

Asaph went home and looked at his own hands.
"I kept my heart clean for nothing," he said.
"I washed my hands every morning for nothing.
All day long I get knocked about,
and every morning brings a new trouble."

He nearly said it louder.
He nearly told the young singers,
"Don't bother being good."
But he stopped.
Those words would have hurt God's children,
so he kept them behind his teeth
and carried them around like a stone.

He thought about it until his head ached,
and his own feet very nearly slipped off God's road.

Then one day in God's house,
in the middle of the morning singing,
he stopped staring at the proud men and came near to God,
and there he saw how the story ends.

The proud men were standing on ice.
God had set their feet on a slippery place,
and one day they would fall.
They would die far from God,
and all their winning would vanish in a moment,
gone like a dream when you wake.

Asaph's cheeks went hot.
"I was so foolish," he told God.
"I was like a stubborn animal in front of you."
(He had been chewing on the same sour thought for weeks,
like a cow chewing the same mouthful.)

"And still," Asaph said, "I am with you.
You hold my right hand.
You lead me, and afterward
you will take me into glory.

"Who do I have in heaven but you?
There is nothing on earth I want besides you.
My body may grow weak,
my heart may give out,
but God is the strength of my heart,
and he is mine forever.

"It is good to be near God."

The next morning Asaph walked the same street
past the same full tables.
God had shown him how the story ends,
and the end had not come yet.

Year after year the proud kept winning,
and still the singers held on to God's hand.

Then a carpenter from Nazareth came to God's house,
one whose heart and hands had always been clean.
Proud men lied about him and laughed at him.
They nailed him to a cross,
and went home to their full tables.
He died, and the mean people seemed to have won for good.

On the third day his grave was empty.
Jesus was alive, the same Jesus who had said of his sheep,
"No one can snatch them out of my hand."
He has promised to come back and set every crooked thing straight.
Long ago, Asaph had felt God holding his right hand.
Jesus' hands have scars in them,
and they do not let go.