Psalm Meditation 825
Third Sunday of Easter
April 10, 2016

Psalm 127
1 Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.
2 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.
3 Sons are indeed a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.
5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
(NRSV)

From what I know about myself and the people around me, we spend a lot of time worrying about things over which we have no control. We worry about what other people are doing, what they are saying and what they might be thinking. We worry about what is going on around us. We want to believe that we can exert some control over people and events in our area. The psalmist reminds us that we don’t. We can worry and fret about what is happening whether we are active in the situation or not. Recognizing the active presence of God in our lives has a lot to do with how we deal with all that is going on in our lives.

One of our current worries is that the world around us in changing. Those of us who have been in the majority are losing that status as the state of the world changes. Some of the changes are the ordinary pendulum swings of taste as well as shifts of the moral compass as one generation leaves the running of the world to the next. We can fight the changes, and some of them are important to dispute, we can accept them with a shrug of the shoulders or we can accept them as appropriate changes in the way of the world, and there are some of those too. Through it all some will struggle to find God at work in the world while others will see more easily where God is at work.

In the midst of our anxiety we do well to recognize that we do not own the world. It is given to us in trust by a God who loves us. We are caring for the world as stewards; holding it as responsible care takers for God and builders and improvers for the next generations. Tempting as it may be to suck all the resources out of the world, the creation, for our own benefit, we do well to leave a good bit of this trust for the sake of those who come after us. For some it will be for our own children, for each of us it will be for the children of God.

April 4, 2016
LCM