Psalm Meditation 998
Proper 13
August 4, 2019

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)

We can beat ourselves up pretty badly when we compare ourselves to the people around us. We use the wrong criteria for our judgments, we make assumptions about the success of the other, and we forget about one of the most important aspects of any life. When we start by looking at problematic information, we end with problematic conclusions.

One of the ways we compare ourselves to others is income. Do they make more than me? They must be better at what they do, or what they do is more important than what I do. We assume that the position the other is in is somehow better than mine for some arbitrary reason. We forget that being happy is way more important than a lot of the standards we use to judge our relative worth. We forget that high profile positions have more stresses than rewards. We forget that more money is a way to compensate people for more headaches and heartaches.

Of course, comparing ourselves to others is always a problem. Since we don’t do the exact same work in the exact same place, any comparison is faulty. Since we know what is in our own heart and head without knowing what is in the other person’s heart and head, we make bad judgments about our apples and their oranges. Am I happy where I am? Do I have healthy relationships with the people around me? Does the presence of God in each of our lives make a positive difference? “Thus shall the [person] be blessed who fears the Lord.”


July 29, 2019
LCM