Psalm 23 - Part V - Blessing upon Blessing
I want to push y’all a
little this evening. Take out something
to write with. Does anyone need
anything? Lift your hand, I have pens right here. Let me pass out these papers,
please take one and pass the rest along.
This is an exercise that I mentioned to y’all before and have challenged
many to take on over the years since I first used it with a youth group on a
summer retreat. As I have shared before,
it is a part of my devotional journaling most mornings. What I would like you to do, right now, is
take a few minutes and write down ten ways that God blessed you yesterday. If you need to add numbers because you can
come up with more than ten, please do so.
If you are having trouble thinking of ten, let me offer this. Think of everything you did yesterday and
everything you used yesterday, what if you woke up tomorrow and it was gone or
you couldn’t do it any more, where would you feel the loss? Or as someone else asked one time, “what if
you only have tomorrow what you thanked God for today?” Still need some help? It can be something as simple (which I start
my list with each day), “waking up.” It
can be a special meal—like breakfast at Seaside, or fresh shrimp on the grill,
or any food you ate. It can be cup of
coffee or a glass of water. You can
include a conversation you had with a good friend, a sibling, a spouse, or a
child. It could be an accomplishment,
like completing a project at work or school or walking a 5K. It could be seeing a rainbow, holding a baby,
or celebrating a birthday. It could be
that you didn’t get stopped today at North River Bridge. It could have been a dream that the preacher
would let keep this short and sweet.
Take a moment more. How many have
finished?
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. God provides for us all that we need. It may not be all that we want. It may not be all that we ask for. It may not even be what we think we need when
we need it. Yet the truth is, and I’ve
learned it the hard way sometimes, if we are patient, and wait on the Lord’s
timing, we will find that we truly have received all that we need and have
received it when it was needed the most.
We trust also that if we ask for an egg, God won’t give us a scorpion,
or if we ask for bread that He won’t give us a rock. It is also learning to bring our will and
desires into line with God’s will and desires by learning to seek first His
Kingdom and His Righteousness before we ever begin petitioning God.
He maketh the me to lie
down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the
paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
God brings us to places of rest and places of renewal—whether our green
pastures and still waters are literally unmoving water and fields of green or whether
they are found by a waterfall in the mountains or along the beach with the
crashing waves. They are the places were God brings us to stop…be with Him…and
be renewed. God calls us to take a
Sabbath break to spend time with him, with our family, and simply be
still. God invites us to cast our
burdens upon Him and leave them there, that we might find peace. Then rested, he sends us out on missions of
his saving justice, seeking to bring restoration to His Creation.
Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art
with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Those righteous paths will, at times, take us through valleys of the
shadow of death. There will be times in
our lives where it seems so dark that that death itself has hold of us. The Psalmist calls us to remember, though,
that we do not enter that valley alone.
God is with us. God never deserts us in the face of those times. With His rod, we are reminded that God will
protect us from our enemies, that nothing will be able to ever destroy us, that
God and God alone has the ultimate and final word in our lives. God’s staff signifies His guiding presence in
our lives and His efforts to draw us closer to Himself and to the rest of the
flock, reminding us again, that we are not alone in the valley. We are also called to remember that the dark
places are not our final destination, that we walk through the valley of
the shadow of death. We don’t stop
there, we don’t reside there, we walk through there, and we will come out on
the other side.
Thou preparest a table
before me in the presence of mine enemies.
God declares the victory before the battle is ever fought. If we have aligned ourselves with God, then
we will find that we have assurance, regardless of the conflict, that we have won
the victory…and every time we gather at His Table, as we did last Wednesday and
this past Sunday, we celebrate the victory that we know God has promised over
whatever battle may be before us.
That brings us to
today. Thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: And I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever.
We are the anointed
children of God. With the waters of our
baptism, we recognize that God has poured out His Holy Spirit and anointed us.
God has marked us and set us apart. God
has claimed us as His sons and daughters.
And just as Jesus recognized in that the claim that He was set aside “to
preach the gospel to the poor…heal the broken hearted…preach deliverance to the
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised, [and] to preach the acceptable year of the Lord,”[i]
our baptism reminds us that God has set those same tasks before us…living as
living Body of Christ, the work and mission of Christ, becomes the work and
mission of us, together.
How do we do this? Through
the blessings God has poured out upon us.
The Psalmist said, my cup runneth over.
God pours blessings into our lives, every day. We began this message by making a list of ten
or more of the blessings that we experienced just yesterday…and each and every day
God pours blessing after blessing into our lives. The Psalmist realized, just as we need to
realize if we haven’t already, that those blessings are so many that they can’t
be contained in just our lives. They
aren’t mean to be contained in just our lives.
Just as a cup filled past capacity overflows and the contents spread out
all around, God intends for the blessings we named, and the blessings He pours
into our lives every day, to touch more lives that just our own.
When we realize just
how much God is blessing us, God doesn’t intend for us to go out and get a
bigger cup so that we can contain and hold all the blessings. He doesn’t want us to, like the farmer of
Jesus’ parable, go out and build bigger barns.
He doesn’t intend for us to place our hand over the cup and say, “that’s
enough Lord, no more blessings, my cup is full.” God’s intent is to pour blessing upon
blessing out upon us so that those blessings may flow from us into the lives of
those around us. The cup overflows, not
to make a mess (though it can make a mess of our comfortable clean lives), but
in order that not only our thirst might be quenched, but also the thirst of
those around us.
We began this series
acknowledging how God provides what we need, all that we truly need. The beginning of the 23rd Psalm
was about us. The end is about everyone
else…filling our cup to overflowing is not about us, it is about God blessing
others through us, meeting their needs through our blessings, through our
lives.
However God has blessed
us, God’s intent is not for us to hoard it, but for us to share it…and share it
not only with those who already have a relationship with Him, but primarily
with those who don’t, that they might come to know Him. What does the overflowing cup look like? Maybe God has blessed us with wealth. It doesn’t mean that we go around dropping
money wherever we walk. It means when we
see ministries or needs before us, that we let those funds flow from us in ways
that help meet those needs, whether it is supporting a homeless shelter,
providing food for the hungry, or financing repairs on a home destroyed by a
flood or hurricane. It means if we have
been blessed with extra free time, that we let that time flow from us as we
look for ways we can touch the lives of those around us who need help, or just
need someone to sit by them through difficult times. It means if we have been given any gifts or
talents or abilities that we let our used of them flow into the lives of those
around us.
If there was any
question about it, those questions are answered by the beginning of the next
verse, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”.
Note those words…it is not “Surely goodness and mercy shall lead me…”. It is
not “Surely goodness and mercy shall surround me…”. It is not “Surely goodness
and mercy shall be poured out upon me….”. It is “Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me….”. If we are living with the Lord as our Shepherd and if we
are letting God’s blessings overflow from us into the lives of others, then we
will leave a trail of goodness and mercy behind us. People will see where we have been because
the path behind us will be marked by acts of goodness and mercy. The folks who encounter us will find their
lives changed for the better because we have been there. It means when we pass by folks who are in the
midst of their dark valleys, we come alongside them and walk with them the rest
of the way through the valley—that they might encounter and experience goodness
and mercy flowing from God and through us.
If we leave pain,
brokenness, and hate in our wake, then we are not following the shepherd. If
folks feel judged and condemned after encountering us, then we are not living
with Lord as our guiding shepherd. If
we walk by where there is a need and the need is still there, then we have to question
whether or not we are following the shepherd.
Since Hurricane
Florence, I have been blessed to see so many leaving a trail of God’s mercy and
grace in their wake, touching the lives of others in need, often leaving their
own need behind to help someone else.
There is still a long way to go in recovery here and across the
southeast—from Florence and Michael and all the rain in between and since. Add to those storms the fires raging in
California, the volcanoes erupting in Hawaii, and the earthquake in Alaska, and
in our nation alone there is opportunity to let goodness and mercy flow from
us…beyond that there is the great needs in every corner of the globe. There is
no shortage of opportunity if we just let the blessing of God flow not only
into us, but pour forth from us--where we see destruction, loss, and even
death, we are called to allow the cup of our blessings of our lives to overflow
with mercy and goodness into those places.
Wherever we go we must
let our cup overflow, we must let mercy and grace trail behind us…we must let
our blessings multiply into the blessing of others. For it is when folks feel like they have been
welcomed, embraced, forgiven, healed, loved…when they experience mercy and
grace in their encounters with us…then we know we are living with the Lord as
our shepherd and that we will live in His house forever.
In the Name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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