Devotional
Short Note on Psalm 146: God directed is the key in everyone’s life. The
psalmist knows that and wants to praise the Lord with songs (146:1-2). It is
not just a liturgical chant, knowing the words so well that one can dust off
the clothes or do something else while singing. It is not playing a tape of
people chanting while one goes through the motions of the cultic act. The
psalmist says: “in my life” and “in my being” (146:2a,b). No one lives in
partitions. Yet one can. No one exists with absentee attention, yet one can.
The active persistence to focus on God and God only during worship is everyone’s
challenge. It will remove superficiality from our actions.
Trusting
in politicians is one of the great deceptions of our time. Or one trusts one’s
father with so much respect that he almost takes the place of God. There is
temporary help from fathers, politicians and leaders of the world, but
long-term help is there none. Paradigm-shifts are human.
The
Paradigm-shift comes when “his breath goes forth and he returns to dust”
because “in that very day his thoughts perish” (146:4).
Real
happiness is the person whose help is God and whose hope is in the Lord his God
(146:5). The identity of God is that He made everything (146:6). He also keeps
truth for ever (146:6). This is important in an age when they say that truth is
relative and in shifting sands. Nothing is normative the Modernists were trying
to say rejecting any form of norm including the Bible or laws of the Bible or
rules of God. “I do it my way” they said and still do.
The
oppressed that fears the Lord is taken care of in justice by God. The oppressor
may succeed in a short term, but the wheel turns and come back with actions on
him/her/itself. Organized Institutions of oppressions will face surprises down
the line. God will feed the hungry and release the prisoners. There are
countries who place people in long sentences of detention because they possess
a Bible or left their Bible in a hotelroom. God is seeing this and justice is
awaiting a moment of God’s display.
The
Lord opens the eyes of the blind because Jesus Christ is the Lord and the
Lordship agenda of Luke 4 included also this action. He raised up those who are
bowed down. “The Lord loves the righteous” (146:8c). To shun away from rightful
acts in one’s life is to walk a dangerous road. To approach the comfort zone of
God is to seek righteousness and right doing and the love of God will embrace
the person.
Strangers
and foreigners are preserved, even migrants. Those who are fatherless and
motherless through hardship and war-torn conflicts, will be upheld by the Lord.
“And the way of the wicked he makes crooked” (146:9). God leaves the wicked to
lead themselves to their own destruction if they so choose and persistent so,
rejecting his calls for a change.
The
day will come when the Lord will reign for ever, from heavenly Zion unto all
generations (146:10).