Restored Fortunes – Psalm 126

A text – Psalm 126

¹ When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,we were like those who dream.
² Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
³ The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

⁴ Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
⁵ May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
⁶ Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

A reflection:

We believe in a God who keeps promises. We put our faith in the same God who made a covenant with Abraham and kept both sides of the bargain, no matter what. This psalm was probably written just after the people of Israel had been released by Cyrus the Great from their Babylonian exile, when memories of their release were still top of mind. As they returned to their own land, some scholars believe they were praying this psalm to the Lord to help them bring back their own farmland. After all, in a desert country, the kind of rains they got would determine whether seed would flourish or be washed away.

The people prayed for this result, and not hopelessly. They prayed to the Lord, knowing full well that promises of God would be kept, that God would never abandon them. Just as “the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion” in verse 1, surely the Lord will “restore our fortunes like the watercourse of the Negeb” (verse 4) if only we trust in God’s ways and God’s timing.

It is not second nature for us to trust in God, perhaps. Especially those of us who are not regular church-goers, people who may have trust in the Lord as a part of their weekly vocabulary. But think about it. We believe in a God who loves us beyond measure, who was willing to die so that we might have an eternal life and not simply wither and disappear in our old age or calamity. This Creator God, who was also our Redeemer and continues daily to be the One who Brings Us Back to holy thought and beliefs, this God transcends space and time. Life with this Triune God is our destiny. Why shouldn’t we, like the Israelites, pray for and believe we will receive homegoing with shouts of joy? God keeps God’s promises.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for saving us, time and again. Thank you for preserving the story of the people of Israel, who were stubborn, forgot you, complained, and were rescued anyway. This alone should help us to realize that you love us and pay attention to us. Help us to turn to you, building our relationship with you every day.  Amen.