December 5 / Psalm 129

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Psalm 129

A very different psalm today. It’s all about Israel’s enemies and God’s consistent deliverance of Israel from those enemies (Ps. 129:4) – from Israel’s infancy (Ps. 129:1-2) through to her growth years. Although Israel has seen the Lord’s deliverance, the enemies remain.

Is that a picture of our Christian culture today in the USA? It seems that with the COVID shutdowns that the church has lost membership throughout the USA. We see political battles over same-sex issues and for abortion rights. Christians are mocked as judgmental and discriminatory – a same-sex issue is going before the Supreme Court today, where a wedding website designer chooses not to do websites that celebrate same-sex marriages, but the LBGTQ-rights people want to force the issue instead of moving on to a more accommodating company.

It’s not just the USA. European Christianity has seen huge declines; Christians are no longer the majority in some European countries. Plus there are atheistic Communist countries and Middle Eastern and African and Asian lands where Christians are actively, physically persecuted. Where is God in all this? How will His people respond? As Kerry told us yesterday, pray “Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus, Come!”

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  2. Good morning, y’all!

    I enjoyed our time together yesterday. Hope we can get everyone for our (relatively short) gathering on the afternoon of December 31 to finish out the past year and start strong for 2023. (Wow, 2023? Can this century already be getting close to one quarter of the way through?!?)

    Okay, so Psalm 129…

    My belief that God still has a protective, personal interest in the welfare of Israel has grown stronger over the past few years. They are still his Chosen Ones. So I pray for Israel, and particularly Jerusalem. I grieve for the violence against Jews and the rising antisemitism in our country and around the world. We truly need to push back against this destructive flood!

    I agree with the psalmist’s prayer…

    May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward! Let them be like the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, with which the reaper does not fill his hand or the binder of sheaves his bosom, while those who pass by do not say, “The blessing of the Lord be upon you! …”

    Psalm 129:5-8‬

    (Interesting daily greeting, by the way. How nice would it be if we said this sort of blessing on each other as a greeting? Blessing another person is not really in our modern repertoire. But at Children’s Worship we do this at the end of each session; I think it’s quite wonderful!)

    Ultimately I believe we should be strongly in prayer for God’s Chosen People, and therefore, “… We bless you (Israel) in the name of the Lord!” (Ps. 129.8).

    Blessings!

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