Psalm Meditation 819
Third Sunday in Lent
February 28, 2016

Psalm 128
1 Happy is everyone who fears the LORD , who walks in his ways.
2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
4 Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD .
5 The LORD bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
6 May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!
(NRSV)

The cynic in me wants to argue with the first two verses, at the very least. I know that not every person of faith has enough to eat and the lives of those people are not very happy. Then I read it all again. There is no promise that there is enough or that the happiness of people of faith lives up to my definition of happiness. There are folks who don’t have enough by my standards who are content with what they have. It is not a sit back on their heels and never have another worry contentment. Theirs is a contentment of knowing that they are in the hands of God, no matter what.

Their happiness is not based on what they have so much as their awareness that they are in the hands and heart of God when the world is good to them and when it is not. This happiness has much more to do with what God thinks of them, how God treats them and loves them than what the rest of the world thinks of them. Yes, more stuff might be nice, especially necessities like enough food and water for everyone, however God’s gifts and presence are more important than the stuff of life.

The psalmist does not recommend that we surrender our necessities or that we give up our ‘enough’ so that we are able to depend more fully on God. The psalmist is calling us to depend on God so that we can more easily see how much is enough. As we place our emphasis on the presence of God we discover a sense of contentment that has very little to do with how much stuff we have and more to do with the quality of our relationships with God and with the people around us.

February 22, 2016
LCM