At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know that there is a God of power who can cut them down like the grass and leave them withering like the green herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man. But there are also times when we need to know that God possesses love and mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance. When days grow dark and nights grow weary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice which will lead us through life's dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart" (sermon on the text of Matthew 10.16; preached in the summer of 1959)
"O Lord, ...Can wicked rulers be allied with thee, who frame mischief by statute? ...[The Lord] will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness; the Lord our God will wipe them out" (Ps. 94.20, 23).
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