Longing for Babylon

The world surges with noise and worry while our heart tries to find a place to rest. We wake tired. We speak sharply to people we love. We wonder if the unease in our soul is simply the price of living now, or something deeper. We confess this truth at a kitchen table with a worn Bible between our hands: I want someone to fix this. I want a ruler who will right the wrongs, settle the chaos, and make sense of the days.

Israel asked for that once. In 1 Samuel 8, the elders come to Samuel and say, “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Sam 8.5). They pointed to the corruption of Samuel’s sons and the chaos around them and believed a king would deliver them from disorder. God had always anticipated a king for his people. Deuteronomy 17 made provision for one. The sin was not the desire for leadership but the desire for a king like all the nations, a visible substitute for trust in Yahweh. God himself diagnosed it plainly. He told Samuel, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them” (1 Sam 8.7). The longing was not simply for governance. It was a misplaced longing for someone to be king in the stead of the King.

The wisdom of Scripture does not condemn our hope for order. It exposes where we place that hope. Saul’s reign soon revealed that human authority carries frailty and temptation. Israel found itself caught between the promise of God and the limitations of mortal power. In this tension we see our own. We want peace. We want justice. We want someone who will embody righteousness and make all the crooked things straight.

Yet there is only one King whose rule saves. Before Pontius Pilate, Jesus says plainly, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18.36). Christ’s kingdom does not bypass the woes of this world, but it transforms the heart that longs for safety, reorders the heart that trusts in princes rather than in the Prince of Peace, and will one day renew creation itself. His reign does not exclude governance or civic responsibility, but it places all human authority under the lordship of love, mercy, and justice revealed on Calvary. Every throne from Saul to David pointed forward to this. Every broken reign whispered that the Son of David’s kingdom alone would be everlasting.

So pray for wisdom for leaders. Engage in your community with thoughtfulness and courage. But anchor your hope in the One who reigns from heaven and who holds every broken thread of history in his hands. Let Christ be your King when the longing for Babylon grows loud again in your heart.

~PW 🌮🛶