Psalms 106-107; Rejoice and Remember

 Psalms 106-107

Rejoicing and Remembering

Psalms 106:1-2 (NASB95) 

1Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting. 2 Who can speak of the mighty deeds of the LORD, Or can show forth all His praise?

Psalms 106:4-5 (NASB95) 

4 Remember me, O LORD, in Your favor toward Your people; Visit me with Your salvation, 5 That I may see the prosperity of Your chosenones, That I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, That I may glory with Your inheritance.

Psalms 107:1-3 (NASB95) 

1Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. 2 Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary 3 And gathered from the lands, From the east and from the west, From the north and from the south.

Psalms 107:5-9 (NASB95) 

5 They were hungry and thirsty; Their soul fainted within them. 6 Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble; He delivered them out of theirdistresses. 7 He led them also by a straight way, To go to an inhabited city. 8 Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness, And for His wonders to the sons of men! 9 For He has satisfied the thirsty soul, And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.

Psalms 106 and 107 are all about praising the Lord for the things He has done. You can’t properly rejoice if you can’t remember. That is one of the main purposes of the Jewish festivals. They celebrate Passover every spring to remember the deliverance of their people from Egypt. These psalms recount many of the details of that exodus and the journey through the wilderness so that the people can remember and rejoice in that memory.

What has the Lord done for you? We recently went through a Cleansing Stream retreat where we experienced much healing and deliverance. Many people were set free during that retreat. But it is not enough to merely be set free… we must remember. If we don’t remember, and rejoice in that memory, we have a tendency to fall back into the old ways. We can be like the Israelites in the wilderness that longed to return to the leeks and garlic of Egypt, even if it meant returning to slavery. Rejoicing in the memory of our deliverance is a great antidote to wanting to return to the pit. Memory is selective and we tend to forget the bad things. Thus we need to continually rejoice, remembering how the Lord has delivered us from bondage. Like Psalm 40 reminds, us we need to sing a new song every day so that we don’t return to that pit of miry clay.

Praise the LORD! 

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Praise the LORD! 

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

 Psalms 107:43 (NASB95) 

Whois wise? Let him give heed to these things, And consider the lovingkindnesses of the LORD.

Psalms 106:48 (NASB95) 

Blessedbe the LORD, the God of Israel, From everlasting even to everlasting. And let all the people say, “Amen.” 

Praise the LORD!

So let us be wise and remember the lovingkindness of the Lord and all the things he has brought us through. Let us bless the Lord and rejoice always.

Let all the people say “Amen”.

Praise the Lord!

Retirement and Parents

Retirement and Parents

1 Timothy 5:3-4 (NKJV) 3 Honor widows who are really widows.4 But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is good and acceptable before God.

Leviticus 19:32 (NKJV) 32 'You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God: I am the LORD.

Baby boomers are a sandwich generation. Our children are somewhere in the generation X to millennial generation groups, and may or may not be entirely self sufficient. On the other hand, our parents, those who are still living, are in the Greatest Generation. They are very proud and self sufficient; but now are getting to the age where they can no longer be self sufficient. What to do?

On the first item, hundreds of books have been written, and I don't have anything to add. You just have to "train up a child in the way he should go" and be ready to let go and trust God when it's time for them to grow up. That sounds simple, but it's a lot harder that it sounds. Too many of us have been "helicopter parents" and it comes as quite a shock to us when it comes time to let go. That's why it takes faith to be a parent. Only God can keep an eye on those precious ones as they fly off on their own.

Now aging parents are a different case. You look up to them and rely on them for decades, then one day you turn around and everything is different. The can-do dad suddenly becomes the one needing help to get anything done. The forever comforting mom is the one that needs care and comfort. That in itself is hard enough to adjust to, but is made harder when the parents don't realize, or perhaps just don't accept, that they are the ones that need help now. How do you help the one who has always helped you and doesn't realize that they are now the ones needing help?

Paul instructs Timothy to teach the church to take care of parents: "... show piety at home and to repay their parent; for this is good and acceptable before God." This is in accord with the tradition of Moses who taught that "you shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man...". Thus we have it on good authority that taking care of our aging parents is the right thing do do, but this doesn't necessarily give us any guidance on how to do that. 

Maybe there is a key in the way that Moses uses the word "honor". A child in diapers and an incontinent old person need some of the same kind of care, but the elderly one is due a measure of honor and respect that you wouldn't necessary accord to the child. That's where it gets hard, continuing to give honor when it gets difficult to help, and especially when that help doesn't seem to be appreciated. The parents probably will even resent the fact that they need help from the very ones that they have loved and cared for for decades. Growing old can get messy!

As I said earlier, I don't have any answers, I just pray that God gives me the wisdom and patience to be able to render tender care and honor at the same time. It's hard but I think the Lord will reward any efforts we make to take care of our parents... with honor.

Proverbs and Retirement Planning

Retirement Planning- Proverbs

Pr 23:4 Do not wear yourself out to become rich;
be wise enough to restrain yourself.
5 When you gaze upon riches, they are gone,
for they surely make wings for themselves,
and fly off into the sky like an eagle!

Pr 25:33 “A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to relax,
34 and your poverty will come like a bandit,
and your need like an armed robber.”

One of the most stressful things about retirement is financial planning. You want to be able to enjoy your retirement and do the things you’ve been wanting to do, but you don’t want to outlive your money and end up penniless either.  I suppose it’s all a matter of balance… and faith, of course.

The writer of Proverbs tells us that this is not a new problem. In Pr 23:4-5, the wise man tells us not to work yourself to death since riches are just going to sprout wings and fly away anyway. This pretty much sums up the worries we have about wanting to rest from our labors but still have enough money to live off of. It sure does seem like money can take wing and fly away like the eagle, or in our times, like the Wall Street bear and bull.  You just never know when they are going to take it all away!

On the other hand, the wise man says in Pr 25:33 that you shouldn’t be lazy. “A little sleep, a little slumber.. and your poverty will come like a bandit.” So work is a good thing, just not too much of it. But wise King Solomon does enjoin us to rest in Ecclesiastes:

Ec 4:6 Better is one handful with some restthan two hands full of toil and chasing the wind.

So let us work to get one handful, trusting in the Lord that it will be provision enough, and then rest.  We don’t want to be like the foolish man who chases after the wind to get two hands full, but ends up exhausted and, in the end, just sees all of his riches sprout wings and fly off anyway! As in most things in life, it all boils down to faith and trust.  Do  you really have faith in the Lord and trust Him to provide your daily bread, even when you don’t go out and labor for a paycheck any more? I hope that I have that kind of faith, but if you hear me worrying or complaining, just slap me up side the head and tell me to go read Proverbs. 😉

Work, Toil and Rest (Day 7)

Gen 2:2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing.
Gen 3:17b ... cursed is the ground thanks to you;
in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
Heb 4: 9-11 Consequently a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God. 10 For the one who enters Godʼs rest has also rested from his works, just as God did from his own works. 11 Thus we must make every effort to enter that rest, ...
NET Bible

God rested from His work on the seventh day. Then he curse the ground and sentenced man to toil all the days of his life. But finally, in the new covenant, there is a Sabbath rest available, but it takes effort to enter that rest.  There is a mystery here.

The first point is that work is good. God worked six days to create the world. Every meaningful accomplishment requires work. In the technical sense, work is force applied over a distance, which means that effort is required to move forward. From various accounts of heaven we also understand that there will be work for us to do in heaven. I'm not exactly sure what it will be, but there will be something useful for us to accomplish there. So work, in itself, is good.

Second, after the fall, man was sentence to a life of toil and labor. There is something about having to scratch an existence from the ground that reminds us of original sin and the fall of man. So toil is difficult and is not intended to be pleasant. Even Saint Paul admonished that "If anyone is not willing to work, neither should he eat.” (2 Th 3:10). So if we are to eat, we must work.

Lastly, the Lord provided a sabbath for us to experience rest. Every seven days, we are to rest from our labors and worship the Lord. The writer of Hebrews also indicated that there is an additional sabbath rest that is related to redemption. Jesus was crucified, died, and rose on the third day to redeem us from the curse of the law. This is a mystery in the sense that it was hidden until the time that Jesus rose from the dead. But an additional mystery here is that the writer of Hebrews also indicates that it takes effort to enter that rest.  What are we to make of that?

Perhaps retirement is in some way a representation of this process. We must work to provide for our families, and it is toil and labor. But after a suitable period of faithful work, it is permitted to us to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor, a sabbath rest, as it were. Even so, it requires some effort to dedicate that time of rest to the glory and worship of God.  I'm new to this retirement business, but I'm learning as I go along. So work, toil and rest... and we will understand the mystery of it by and by.