Psalm 146 (NRSV)
Read Psalm 146 on biblegateway.com
Verse 1Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!
Verse 2I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
Verse 3Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
Verse 4When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
Verse 5Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God,
Verse 6who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;
Verse 7who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free;
Verse 8the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.
Verse 9The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
Verse 10The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!
Devotion
At 65, I blew past my retirement party, and kept preaching, three times! Then finally, at 71, I hung up my little red pocket calendar. I came to understand that what made it so hard was that “pastor” is not merely something that I did, it is who I was.
The last five chapters of the Book of Psalms each begin with the same mantra: “Praise the Lord!” Simply put, the first 145 chapters of the Psalms identify who God is: Creator, judge, fortress, wonderful counselor, shield, King. Everything!
But at the end, the psalmist lists what God does: God gives justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry, freedom to the captive, sight to the blind, affirmation to the humble, love to the righteous, attention to the stranger, and support to the forgotten.
Whatever our avocation, it will likely come to an end. Our vocation, our “calling” if you will, is to emulate what God does. Our identity is this: I’m a child of God! So are you! Praise the Lord!
Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, when I confuse what I do with who I am. Sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever, I am a child of God, created and blest by you. And I am enough! Praise the Lord! Amen.
Interested in digging deeper into today’s text?
Read more here.