Scripture: Psalm 146:5-10 (NRSV)
DEVOTIONAL:
Gathered around the family dinner table, I remember my parents sitting back in their chairs, and with a content sigh, they began to tell “our story.” When I was still in diapers, my father attended seminary and my mother stayed at home to take care of my two sisters and me. Without a steady income, life wasn’t easy.
Even though I was too young to remember it myself, I had been told this story countless times before. I knew it by heart.
For years I was embarrassed by the story that exposed my family as someone else’s charity. Yet to my parents, and now to me, it is a story of God’s faithfulness. God always provided what we needed — even down to the penny of the check in our mailbox, which covered rent the next day.
Twenty years later, I realize why my parents re-told this story: to keep the Story alive! In today’s Scripture, for each example of God’s faithfulness, there was someone who kept telling the Story. The Bible is full of examples where people kept the Story alive. Today, we have the opportunity to join them and keep the same Story alive.
Scripture: Psalm 146:5-10 (NRSV)
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God,
6who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;
7who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free;
8the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.
9The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!