Psalm 128: Blessings I Don’t Understand
WORSHIP
LAUDS
Written by Melody Hood
Psalm 128; from The Message
All you who fear God, how blessed you are!
how happily you walk on his smooth straight road!
You worked hard and deserve all you’ve got coming.
Enjoy the blessing! Soak in the goodness!
Your wife will bear children as a vine bears grapes,
your household lush as a vineyard,
The children around your table
as fresh and promising as young olive shoots.
Stand in awe of God’s Yes.
Oh, how he blesses the one who fears God!
Enjoy the good life in Jerusalem
every day of your life.
And enjoy your grandchildren.
Peace to Israel!
I am incredibly blessed. I find it easy to practice gratitude and have no problem thanking God for all of the amazing ways He provides - my house, my job, my family, good food to eat, a dog that brings me joy. I go out to eat and celebrate special occasions and plan little trips and dream of bigger trips when my babies are older. I work hard and “enjoy the fruit of my labor.”
I do stand in awe of the ways God has blessed me, and love hearing testimonies and stories of how God has blessed others. It is a happy life where I get to follow a God who loves me and cares for me and provides all I need.
And yet…
In the back of my mind, when I name the things I’m grateful for, I’m also incredibly aware of how unfair the whole thing is. Why me? Why is my life so blessed and others’ lives are not? Why do I live here, with a good job and healthcare and support, with my privilege and comfort, while other people–who also fear and obey and love God–do not seem to experience prosperity and blessing?
The idea that all who fear God are blessed just doesn’t seem like reality. There is so much injustice, poverty, war, disease and heartache in this world.
Singer, songwriter, Sara Groves sings:
“I believe in a blessing I don’t understand.
I’ve seen rain fall on the wicked and the just.
Rain is no measure of His faithfulness;
He withholds no good thing from us.”
Even though I don’t understand how God’s blessings “work,” I trust that God is good and that God has good for us. As people who follow Jesus, we understand that wealth and power and yes, even a house full of children, isn’t just what is meant by being “blessed.” When Jesus talked about blessings, it was about more than the physical manifestations of blessings, it was about God’s gifts to us that are so much bigger and deeper and harder to grasp. It’s a longer view, a different perspective–that our spiritual needs will be met and even exceeded. Jesus erases things like fear, worry, doubt and shame from our lives. Imagine a life without shame; that’s the blessing Jesus offers.
What does it mean to be blessed? Children like grapes and olive shoots? Growing old enough to have grandchildren? Perhaps. Or maybe simply being obedient to a good God who loves us more than we can fathom.
Reflection:
Think
Are there times in your life where it’s been easier or harder for you to see the ways God is blessing you, the people around you, or God’s followers around the world?
How might you need to re-think your understanding of what it means to be blessed?
Do
In her book “The Lives We Actually Have,” Kate Bowler writes “When I bless the actual days I am living, I suddenly find I have a great deal more to say that is honest. I am mourning. I am bored. I am exhausted. I am apathetic. I discover that I am freed from the need to declare everything #blessed. Good or bad, I don’t have to wait to say something spiritually true. I can simply bless it all instead.” Write your own blessing for yourself or someone else. It can include both things that are current blessings and hopes for future blessings. Be honest about what’s really going on in your life, and trust that God is still blessing it.
Pray
Pray for God to open your eyes to the ways He is blessing you as well as those around you, perhaps in ways you don’t always understand. Ask God how you can be a blessing to someone else today.
VESPERS
Written by Matthew Watson
Read Psalm 128
Psalm 128 opens..
Blessed are all who fear the Lord,
who walk in obedience to him.
2 You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.
FEAR? The Lord..
“Blessed” are those who ‘fear’ the Lord? The usage of the word ‘fear’ isn’t fear as in afraid, but rather the fear that sits on someone when they are in awe of what they see. The kind of awe that sets on us when we gaze out at the ocean for the first time realizing that we stand on the banks of something much larger than we can imagine.
The kind of fear that settles on us – maybe when we watched the eclipse earlier this year and stood on the National Mall as I did and realized I was watching something that I didn’t fully understand despite my free NASA eclipse glasses that I picked up at the NASA table minutes earlier.
Or the kind of awe that hits us when we see the sun rise on a new day after a long night that we weren’t sure would ever end. But it has ended. And a new day is in front of us and it’s glorious in it’s pinks, purples, and oranges as the sun works it’s way above the horizon.
Blessed is the one who experiences that kind of awe in light of who God is; in light of God’s love, God’s rescue, God’s healing, God’s presence in our lives. Blessed are those who are marked by that sensation.
Walk in Obedience? OBEY!?
The verse goes on to say that those who walk in obedience; those are people who are blessed. We might read the word ‘obedience’ in a militaristic, domineering way, but to read it this way would be out of step with what know of God’s character. We gain a fuller sense of the Psalm when we read this passage through the lens of Jesus.
Reading Psalm 128 through what we know if Jesus is to understand our obedience to God as an invitation to follow Jesus, to take up the yoke of Jesus, to learn from him, and discover rest for our souls and a life that is anchored in an unshakeable joy.
Blessed?
“Blessed” is a curious word to us as well. I think sometimes we can read blessed, and ascribe something akin to ‘Godly lucky’, or ‘having a special touch of Spirit’, or ‘sacred / holy’.
But in this context of Psalm 128, what it means most often is having a quality of joy, especially a joy of life. A form of happiness that isn’t dictated by circumstances but lingers with us despite our circumstances – and sometimes, in spite of them.
What the Psalmist is saying in those opening lines is that those who respond to God’s love with awe, well, those are ones who experience joy in their lives.
One of the ways I’ve come to read Psalm 128 - in light of Jesus’ invitation to follow him, is to see Psalm 128:1 as:
For those who find themselves in awe of God’s great love
For those who follow in the gracious ways of the Lord
For them, there is a life filled with joy that cannot be shaken
That is the invitation to us.
An invitation of awe.
An invitation to follow.
An invitation to recover a life of joy.
Reflection:
When have you been moved to awe?
Where are you experiencing joy?
What does it look like to say ‘yes’ to Jesus’ invitation to follow him today?
