Praise Every Day – Psalm 146

A text – Psalm 146

¹ Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
² I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
    I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

³ Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortals, in whom there is no help.
⁴ When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
    on that very day their plans perish.

⁵ Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God,
⁶ who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
⁷     who executes justice for the oppressed;
    who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
⁸     the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the Lord loves the righteous.
⁹ The Lord watches over the strangers;
    he upholds the orphan and the widow,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever,
    your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

A reflection:

The psalmist wants us to rejoice that we have someone eternal to hope on, to believe in. We praise that eternal God for being our help and our future. Look at what this Lord does, over and over again: keeps faith with us, executes justice for the oppressed, gives food for the hungry, sets prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, especially the widows and orphans and strangers, but brings to ruin the way of the wicked.

So what is the bottom line of this psalm? Praise the Lord for his loving deeds that always land on the side of those who need them most: the forgotten ones, the depressed ones those without a secure place. The Lord has always done these things and always will, and the Lord cannot die like even the best of kings can, so the Lord endures forever.

God is with us who believe, and God made everything and everyone, so the fact that God walks with us through good times and bad and loves us no matter what is very important – worth clinging to. And the fact that God prefers to help the poor, the persons with no security, and the people who have been trampled on by others is a further mark of this God who loves us. Trust the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Sometimes we become weary of trusting and praising. Sometimes we feel weak and full of pain. On those days, we need to seek out someone who can read these verses for us, trust for us, and praise for us. God is still there, and still loves us no matter how we feel. Praise the Lord.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us all good things. Thank you for being our eternal Creator and uplifting Lord. Help us to remember to praise you every day, and when we cannot, give us a friend who can do it for us. Amen.