Tag: Exile

A Grouchy Psalm

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment 
Psalm 120 (NLT)

A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem.

I took my troubles to the Lord;
    I cried out to him, and he answered my prayer.
Rescue me, O Lord, from liars
    and from all deceitful people.
O deceptive tongue, what will God do to you?
    How will he increase your punishment?
You will be pierced with sharp arrows
    and burned with glowing coals.

How I suffer in far-off Meshech.
    It pains me to live in distant Kedar.
I am tired of living
    among people who hate peace.
I search for peace;
    but when I speak of peace, they want war!

By Chuck Griffin

Spend some time reading and praying the psalms, and you will soon notice that there seems to be at least one for every situation.

Psalm 120 is a good example. This psalm oozes with grouchiness, a vocal complaint from someone who has grown tired of the deceit around him. Traditionally, this psalm is attributed to David, written when he was under attack by fellow Israelites and forced to live among foreigners.

The psalmist craves a life among peaceful people, people who say what they mean and mean what they say, with no calculated corruption of what God has revealed to be holy and right. When he declares these deceptive tongues will be pierced by sharp arrows and burned by hot coals, his desire for revenge becomes clear.

We’ve all been there, some of us pretty recently. Tolerance is a powerful, Christ-like virtue. But it doesn’t take long for mere humans to become angry when we realize the people we have long tolerated are themselves intolerant, actively working to obfuscate God’s revealed truth.

When we’re feeling such anger, there is nothing wrong with praying this psalm out loud. Just keep that prayer in perspective. The psalmist doesn’t speak of arrows he will launch and burning coals he will impose on these people. Instead, he uses them as symbols of the punishment that God will deliver.

We take comfort in the great promise that the righteous will be rewarded, while the deceitful and manipulative will reap what they have sown.

Our main task in troubled times is to stay right with God. Just keep taking it all to the Lord.

Dear Lord, give us Christ-like demeanors in times of strife, and continue to offer us your grace when we are burdened with anger. Amen.

The Return

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment 
Psalm 147:1-11 (NLT)

Praise the Lord!

How good to sing praises to our God!
    How delightful and how fitting!
The Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem
    and bringing the exiles back to Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
    and bandages their wounds.
He counts the stars
    and calls them all by name.
How great is our Lord! His power is absolute!
    His understanding is beyond comprehension!
The Lord supports the humble,
    but he brings the wicked down into the dust.

Sing out your thanks to the Lord;
    sing praises to our God with a harp.
He covers the heavens with clouds,
    provides rain for the earth,
    and makes the grass grow in mountain pastures.
He gives food to the wild animals
    and feeds the young ravens when they cry.
He takes no pleasure in the strength of a horse
    or in human might.
No, the Lord’s delight is in those who fear him,
    those who put their hope in his unfailing love.

I would never make direct comparisons between our year-long Covid-19 situation and the decades of exile the people of Israel experienced. As we start to see a return to something like normal lives, however, it is easy to borrow a little of their exuberance.

At the church I pastor, Holston View United Methodist, we are resuming in-person worship this Sunday, with safety precautions, of course. (Masks, social distancing, etc.) Several congregants have expressed their joy at the news.

I am looking forward to preaching to a significant number of people, rather than mostly focusing on a distant black lens. Not that I will forget those of you who are out there watching the worship live on the internet, or the recordings. I know many of you will not be able to return to the sanctuary just yet because of Covid concerns, and we always have a population of folks who are homebound. It’s just nice to get back to a good mix of online and in-person worshipers.

The opening of Psalm 147 certainly guides our response as we return to our sanctuaries and other church activities in phases through 2021. We have much to rebuild: our commitment to the Great Commission, the small groups and social networks that sustain us, and our willingness to unabashedly praise God all come to mind.

He is our great and glorious God! Even in places where we cannot yet shout this truth, may our hearts be filled with it.

We also are reminded of our need to approach God with humility. We enter church understanding we are the broken ones, lacking any perfectly pure knowledge. We enter seeking wisdom and correction, knowing we will be blessed in our encounter with the eternal mind.

As we return, let’s continue to put our hope in his unfailing love, expressed perfectly in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for our sins on the cross.

Lord, as church people we are in different stages of return to our places of worship, depending on our locations and individual situations. As Christians, however, we are bound together by your Holy Spirit, and we pray you empower us to worship you well, wherever we may be. Amen.

Seeing the Plan Play Out

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Jeremiah 29:10-14

For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Just before these verses, the political leaders, craftsmen and other fine minds of Jerusalem, living in captivity in their conqueror’s homeland, received bad news from the prophet Jeremiah. They were not going home from Babylon any time soon—they might as well build houses and gardens and settle down.

God’s chastisement of his chosen people, caught up in sin, would ultimately lead to restoration and the continuation of his plan to bring salvation to the world through them. We are reminded, however, that God’s plan plays out over generations, centuries, and even millennia. God plays a long game, one so long that even the devil cannot keep track of it all.

I am struck by how blessed most of us reading this are, living as we have lived. Alignment with God does not automatically mean having a comfortable life. Throughout history, it’s been common for people to have the opposite, forced to live according to the whims of powerful, ungodly people.

We particularly are blessed to live in the time after Christ, making a fully restored relationship with God individually possible through simple faith. On top of that, most of us are blessed to live in places where we have the freedom to worship as we want and live as we want.

Yes, this is another one of those “count your blessings” devotionals. As you make your way through the day, appreciate what you have, and remember how we are called to seek God with all our hearts, using our freedoms to play a part in God’s great plan to redeem all of creation.

Lord, help us through faithfulness and devotion to you to preserve the great gifts we have in this life. May exile never be our state, and may those who find themselves in it also find rescue by your hand. Amen.