When God blesses “us,” it’s to reach “all the nations”
Daily Scripture
Psalm 67:1-7
1 Let God grant us grace and bless us;
let God make his face shine on us,
2 so that your way becomes known on earth,
so that your salvation becomes known among all the nations.
3 Let the people thank you, God!
Let all the people thank you!
4 Let the people celebrate
and shout with joy
because you judge the nations fairly
and guide all nations on the earth.
5 Let the people thank you, God!
Let all the people thank you!
6 The earth has yielded its harvest.
God blesses us—our God blesses us!
7 Let God continue to bless us;
let the far ends of the earth honor him.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
This psalm began sounding like a “generic” expression of thanks to God. But verse 6 specified a reason for gratitude: the vines and fields have produced a harvest. Scholar John Goldingay noted, “A traditional society cannot assume that this year’s harvest implies fruitfulness next year. There are no such guarantees…. this year’s blessing makes people pray more earnestly for next year’s blessing. It will be an expression of God’s grace, and it will issue from God’s face beaming out to them.” *
- The psalm’s thanksgiving was not limited to a good harvest in Israel. “The prayer that this blessing of Israel will lead the ends of the earth to revere God links with the blessing given to Abraham, that all the world will pray to be blessed as Abraham is blessed (Genesis 12:1-3). The idea is that the world will see God’s ‘way,’ the pattern of God’s acting in relation to Israel.” ** Have you learned to pray for God to bless, not only your family, community, and country, but “all the nations,” “the far ends of the earth”?
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Tragedies like tornadoes, hurricanes, and rampaging wildfires remind us that we, too, have no guarantee that our comforts and abundance will always continue uninterrupted. What ways have you learned to remind yourself to thank God whenever there are good things in your life, rather than taking them for granted?
Prayer
Lord God, you are the ultimate source of all good things, and I thank you. Help me play my part in spreading that good news to the far ends of the earth. Amen.
GPS Insights
Denise Mersmann
Denise Mersmann serves as the Care Coordination Director for the churchwide Care Central department at Church of the Resurrection.
Over the years I have watched the news about wildfires and the devastation that results. As a lifelong Midwesterner the wildfires were not something I could really comprehend. I have seen firsthand the impact of tornados, flooding, and hurricanes, but the idea of thousands of acres of forests burning out of control was just impossible to imagine. Even growing up on a farm where there was an annual spring pasture burning, it was always controlled and significantly smaller!
Then in 2019, the wildfires went from a heart wrenching tragedy that we watched from afar to something very personal. You see, my nephew, Jeff, his wife, Jenni, and their two boys, Remington and London, live in Malibu, California, on a beautiful bluff overlooking the ocean with homes tucked in and around tracks of trees and bushes. And that year, the California fires were moving toward them.
We watched the news, scoured the internet, and waited on their regular updates as the fires continued to get closer to their home. With the help of GPS technology, they were able to track, down to the exact house, where the fires were currently burning. Day after day, we waited and prayed as heroes from around the country came to try and stop this raging inferno.
Then the instructions came–it was time for them to evacuate. Time to pack what they could and leave their home and most of their possessions behind. With four people and Piper, their chocolate Lab, there wasn’t much space for “extras”. They took laptops, photos, a few clothes, and the boys each packed a backpack. The rest was left, just as it was. As they pulled away, Jenni took a picture of the house with the most amazing sunset behind it. Ironically, a sunset made even more stunning by the ash and debris particles in the air.
Over the next days, the fires moved through their neighborhood, and they tracked the addresses as the homes of their friends and neighbors were reduced to rubble. The fire came within a couple of blocks of their home before it was brought under control.
Not long after the fire, we visited them and as we drove up it was easy to forget what had happened just a few months before. We drove up their street through beautiful green lush landscape, flowers of every kind and color blooming everywhere we looked. But then, as we crested the top of their hill the beautiful landscape turned black and barren. The foundations of burned homes and piles of debris covered the space where just a few months before there was beauty as far as you could see.
As we talked about that experience, driving away from their home and almost all of their possessions, it became clear that even in the worst of circumstances, they were operating from a center of gratitude. Jeff and Jenni were profoundly thankful for all the people who had stepped up to fight the fires, technology that kept them informed about what was happening, the safe evacuation of their friends and neighbors, but most of all, the reminder that what really mattered to them was in that SUV when they drove away.
It’s easy to forget, when the fires – both real and hypothetical – are raging, to stop and give thanks. But in the end, there is always something to be grateful for… if we just look for it.
© 2024 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* John Goldingay, Psalms for Everyone, Part 1: Psalms 1–72. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013, p. 204.
** Ibid.
