Psalms 5:4

Psalm 5 is a morning prayer written by David, the Israelite king, during a time when he felt surrounded by dishonest and dangerous people. Before laying out his specific requests, David anchors himself in something foundational about God's character: God does not take pleasure in evil. This is not a casual observation — it's a deeply personal anchor point in a world where powerful people often do take pleasure in harmful things and face no consequence. The phrase "the wicked cannot dwell with you" means that evil and God's presence are fundamentally incompatible — not as a legal decree alone, but as a statement about God's nature. He is not morally neutral. He is not indifferent to what is wrong.

Father, I'll admit I've sometimes suspected you of indifference — of looking away when things go wrong. Forgive me for shrinking you down to the size of the disappointing people I've known. You are not like them. You take no pleasure in what hurts us, and that changes everything about how I can come to you today. Amen.

We live in a world where power and goodness are frequently divorced from each other. The people with the most authority aren't always the most trustworthy. Leaders who should protect people sometimes exploit them instead. Institutions circle the wagons. And after enough of that — after enough watching the wrong thing win and the right thing get quietly buried — it becomes almost impossible not to project that pattern onto God. To wonder if he, too, might look the other way. If he, too, might find evil useful when it serves a larger purpose. David is pushing back hard against that assumption. God is not like them. But here's the other side of this truth that deserves its own moment: if God takes no pleasure in evil, then he takes the harm done to you seriously. The careless cruelty that left a mark. The injustice that was never corrected and probably never will be in this life. The thing you've never said out loud to anyone. A God who finds no pleasure in evil is a God who is genuinely grieved by what grieves you — not abstractly, not from a distance, but personally. That is not a small thing. That might be the very thing you needed to hear today.