When Power Chose to Heal

In June 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall stood before Harvard's graduating class and proposed something the world had never seen. Instead of punishing a defeated enemy, the United States would pour thirteen billion dollars into rebuilding the shattered nations of Europe — including Germany, the very country it had just fought to defeat.

Skeptics called it foolishness. But Marshall understood something ancient: that true greatness is measured not by the accumulation of power but by its redemptive use. Within four years, European industrial production surged past prewar levels. Starving families ate again. Children returned to schools. Former enemies became partners in peace.

This is the vision the psalmist paints in Psalm 72 — not a king who hoards power but one who wields it for the broken. "May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor." The righteous ruler described here doesn't build monuments to himself. He bends low. He notices the widow, the orphan, the forgotten one pressed into the dust.

And notice the result: when justice flows downward, blessing rises upward. "May his name endure forever," the psalmist sings. The reign that outlasts all others is the one spent serving the least.

The Most High doesn't measure kingdoms by their borders. He measures them by how gently they treat the vulnerable.