Psalms 2:1-12: in context

This psalm opens with a scene of global uproar. Why do the nations rage, it asks, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, the rulers scheme together, and their aim is to throw off God and his Anointed: let us break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us. Picture the assembled power of the world, the rulers and armies and institutions, straining together to be free of God's rule, certain they can shrug it off. It is an intimidating picture, and it is not hard to feel small and afraid in front of it.

And then comes one of the most bracing verses in the Psalms. He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision. While the powers of earth strain and plot and imagine themselves a real threat to heaven, God is not pacing anxiously. He laughs. Not cruelly, but with the calm of one whose rule was never actually in danger. And having laughed, he simply acts: yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion. The rebellion changes nothing. The King is already installed. All the raging of the mighty against God amounts, from the throne of heaven, to something almost comic in its futility. Then the psalm turns and pleads with those same rulers: be wise, then, and take refuge in him, for blessed are all who take refuge in him. The very King they rage against is offered to them as a shelter.

I need that steadying more than I usually admit. When I look at the raging of hostile powers in the world, the arrogance of the strong, the forces that seem set against everything good, I can slide toward fear or despair, as if God's cause were genuinely in jeopardy. This psalm plants me back in front of the throne, where the One who reigns is not anxious but laughs. When the powers of the world rage and I feel small and afraid, do I remember that the One enthroned above them is unshaken, and have I taken my refuge in the King, rather than counting myself among those straining to be free of his rule?