Humble Thanks
Psalm 123-124[1]
It’s easy to be thankful when all is right with the world. At
least, it seems easy. We can see God’s mercies that are “new every morning”
(Lam 3:23) all around us. Our families and friends, our homes, our jobs, all
the countless gifts that God has poured so generously into our lives constantly
lead us to sincere gratitude. In those times, it seems like the light of
sunshine blesses everything and everyone in our lives. Hopefully, seeing all
the good things God has brought into our lives helps us humbly recognize that
they all come from his hand. And that humble acknowledgement leads us to give
thanks to God. Not just at this time of year, but every day.
It's harder to be thankful when all is not right with your
world. Whether it’s a health crisis, a family crisis, or a financial crisis,
hard times seem to overshadow everything else. The fear of “the worst” can
crowd out even the hint of gratitude from our lives. It’s hard to be thankful
when it seems like there’s nothing to be thankful for. Hard times have a way of
distorting our perspective like that. We can focus all our attention on what’s
wrong with our lives. We can doubt ourselves, wondering what we’ve done wrong
to “deserve” what’s happening. And when get caught in that kind of thinking,
it’s hard to be thankful. But that’s precisely the time when we need to
practice giving thanks!
Our lesson from the Psalms for today helps us learn how to
give thanks in hard times as well as good times. The reading comes from a whole
series of Psalms, Psalm 120-134. They’re called “Psalms of Ascent,” because
they were written to be used by pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem for the great
festivals at the temple. It seems pretty clear, however, that these Psalms come
from a time in Israel’s history when all was not right with their world. The
original temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. The people of Israel
were scattered all over the Middle East. As they made their way to Jerusalem to
worship, some of them lamented the fact that they were not able to live among
their own people, but rather had to live “in far-off Meshech” and “in distant
Kedar” (Ps 120:5, NLT). We don’t know exactly where those places were,
but from what the Psalmist said, they were lands where they did not know
“peace” (Ps 120:6-7).
To be sure, some of them had been allowed to return to their
own land, but even there, their lives there were far from prosperous. Even
those who returned still cried out to God to “restore our fortunes, … as
streams renew the desert” (Ps 126:4, NLT). They longed for the time when
“those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy” (Ps. 126:5, NLT).
Even the temple was merely a shadow of the one that had been there before. The
pilgrimage to Jerusalem was as much a reminder of how much they had lost as it
was an occasion for joyful worship.
And so their observance of their festivals became a time to
cry out to the Lord to have mercy on them. As we heard in our lesson from Psalm
123, they said, “Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy, for we have had our fill
of contempt” (Ps. 123:3, NLT). We know that even the people who had
returned to their own land were constantly harassed by powerful warlords who
controlled part of the territory. That seems to be the point of the cry, “We
have had more than our fill of the scoffing of the proud and the contempt of
the arrogant” (Ps 123:4, NLT). They were living in hard times, but they
were trying to be faithful to give thanks to God for all the ways he had
blessed them.
We see that effort to remain thankful in the fact that, despite
all they were going through, there is a refrain that echoes throughout these
pilgrimage Psalms. It begins with the question that opens Psalm 121: “I look up
to the mountains—does my help come from there?” And the answer comes back, “My
help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!” (Ps 121:1-2, NLT).
We hear it again in our reading for today from Psalm 124. The people praised
God for being on their side and protecting them from being “swallowed alive” by
those who were attacking them, because they knew that “Our help is from the
Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 124:8, NLT). And the final verse
of these pilgrimage Psalms concludes with the prayer, “May the Lord, who made
heaven and earth, bless you from Jerusalem” (Ps. 134:3, NLT). It was a
prayer that, despite the hard times they were going through, God would continue
to bless them. And remember, the God they were praying to was the one who made
heaven and earth, so they expressed their confidence that he had the power to
overcome everything they were dealing with.
Based on the conviction that “Our help is from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth,” the Psalmist calls the pilgrims, despite their
disappointments and fears, despite the attacks they had to endure, despite all
that would call in question their faith, to “hope in the Lord” (Ps. 130:7, NLT).
“Hope” may not seem to be a very powerful word these days, and perhaps there
were some in that day who wondered what good it did to keep hoping for better
days. But “hope” is a word of faith in the Bible. And the reason for calling
the people to “hope in the Lord” was because “with the Lord there is unfailing
love” and “His redemption overflows” (Ps. 130:7, NLT). The Psalmist
repeats the call in Psalm 131: “O Israel, put your hope in the Lord—now and
always” (Ps. 131:3, NLT). And that call rings out to us today, to put
our hope in the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Hoping in the Lord, putting our trust in God, looking to
the one who made all the heavens and the earth to care for us—these seem just
natural when times are good. But when we’re facing a serious crisis, it can
feel like a stretch that is out of our reach. Those are the times when we need
to fall back on the basics. We can do what the psalmists did repeatedly: remember
all the ways that God has been faithful in the past. We may need to make a list
that we can keep as a handy reminder. When it’s hard to give thanks, we can stand
in the truth that we are all, each and every one of us, God’s beloved child. We
always have been and we always will be. And nothing will ever change that. We
can also make a list of what we’re thankful for in our lives right now. We all
have many gifts to be thankful for, and in hard times it helps to have a list
we can look at. More than that, taking time each day writing out several
specific things for which we are grateful today becomes a way to shift
our attention from hardship and fear to gratitude.
When we remember all the ways that God has been faithful to
us in the past, when we stand in the truth that we are all, each and every one
of us, God’s beloved child, and when we list the things in our lives for which
we are truly thankful, it can be a humbling experience. It helps us remember
that God has been good to us in so many ways, far beyond anything we could ever
deserve, far beyond anything we have to earn. And that reinforces the
conviction that, despite whatever we may have to endure in this life, we always
have reasons to give thanks to God. These basic disciplines of faith help us
keep on trusting God through the hardest of times. They help us to keep on
hoping in the God who made all the heavens and the earth. They help us continue
to give God our humble thanks.
[1] ©2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/19/2023 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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