Listen

Praise the Lord!

Let my whole being praise the Lord! I will praise the Lord with all my life; I will sing praises to my God as long as I live.

Don’t trust leaders; don’t trust any human beings— there’s no saving help with them! Their breath leaves them, then they go back to the ground. On that very same day, their plans die too.

The person whose help is the God of Jacob— the person whose hope rests on the Lord their God— is truly happy!

Psalm 146:1-5

Think

It is not too terribly hard to interpret what the Psalmist is trying to tell us here. A common theme throughout the Bible is to not put our trust in earthly things. We hear it once again today. Earthly leaders, governments, dreams, plans, and material things do not add up to much when weighed against our heavenly inheritance. To hammer home the point, the psalmist says that when these people die, their earthly plans die as well, like they never even existed at all. We are told, however, that those who love the Lord will be rewarded with happiness!

As nice as that would be – to just be happy because we put all our hope in God – this doesn’t gel with our current human experience. So many issues in our current world leave me with no other choice but to turn to God. People, leaders, and all manner of earthly things come and go in our lives. One of the few constants is God and the unlimited abundance of love God has for us.

Will Oxford

Pray

God, your love tips the scale when compared to the issues of our current day. Bless me as I continue to live my life, however brief, in order to serve you and your only son, Jesus Christ, through love. Amen.

Go

Thérèse of Lisieux, a young French Carmelite nun of the 19th century, wrote:

"My vocation is love! In the heart of the Church, who is my Mother, I will be love. So I shall be everything and so my dreams will be fulfilled — ​to make Love loved."

May we be love. May our lives be portraits of love.