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By: Blake Hiemstra You may listen to this devotion in audio form via podcast here.
Blessed are all who fear the Lord,
who walk in obedience to him.
You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
Yes, this will be the blessing
for the man who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
May you live to see your children’s children—
peace be on Israel.
- Psalm 128:1-6
Maybe what we need more than anything is a little road trip.
To anyone who’s walked the narrow road for any length of time, weariness threatens even the most stout-hearted and resolute. Despair encroaches on us and the lure of succumbing to sarcasm and negativity is sometimes just so hard to resist. The temptation to pick up the phone and shoot a text to a trusted friend that we know will breed unrest and discontent sometimes sucks us in with an irresistible vortex. A simple line of negativity sometimes serves as a narcotic to the dull gnawing emptiness kneading inside of us. Rather than clicking out characters on our phone, maybe we just need to start walking with our mouths open and our lungs filled with praise.
Imagine a troop of happy travelers, wending their way towards Jerusalem, and instead of kibitzing about the latest gossip or fulminating about the recent problems at the synagogue, they’re rather joyfully chanting a Psalm together, having committed it to memory and half-singing, half-shouting the promises embedded in the verse.
This is the picture that Psalm 128 paints. One of the Psalms of Ascent, it’s part of a collection of Psalms that pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem would sing as they made the climb towards the city and towards worship in the temple. It’s a song that celebrates the life of faith. Those who are faithful to God, those who earnestly honesty fear the Lord, receive blessings and prosperity. They enjoy the fruit of hard labor. Their families thrive, enriched by wives compared to the fruit of the vine and children destined to become as strong and fertile as olive trees.
In the midst of division and apathy and distrust and woe, we need to make the trip to the holy city as well, emboldened and buoyed by Psalms such as this that sing the joyful abundant blessings of a life dedicated to the fear of the Lord.
When Carla and I made the trip to Jerusalem a few years ago, perhaps one of the more enduring images is that of devout Jews chanting and dancing and weeping tears of joy at the Western Wall, so overcome with deep raw pure Sabbath love for their God. It wasn’t uncommon to see groups of Jews circled up, holding hands and singing joyfully together. It wasn’t garbled words that manage to sneak out of half-closed mouths while wondering about the song’s selection or worrying how the roast in the crockpot’s faring or whether a fantasy football team’s perpetual underperformance might cast a shadow over a Sunday afternoon. No, this type of Sabbath was filled with devotion and praise, with God’s favor making his servants ebullient with his blessings.
This is what we need. We need to sing the Psalms together. This is not a commentary on any particular style of worship. It’s simply speaking the truth that walking the narrow road on the path towards eternal Zion is not one that’s done well by trudging begrudgingly along in faith. It’s a path that should be marked by joy-filled exuberance.
And maybe our decision to walk and sing as we journey towards God will be met with the same type of result that Psalm 128 forecasts. Imagine the Lord of the universe looking upon our authentic fellowship teeming with joy and gladness and from heaven, and the following blessing falls like new rain on our parched souls:
May the Lord bless you from Zion;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
May you live to see your children’s children—
peace be on Visalia Christian Reformed Church.