Daily Devotional – June 5, 2020

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A dose of encouragement through the “virus crisis”

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Well, it's finally Friday after a really busy, chaotic week, hasn't it been?
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Let's hope and pray for a calm weekend in our land, in our state, in Chicago, in the suburbs and so forth.
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It's been a crazy year, very crazy year. Regarding this year, one of my
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Facebook friends has a birthday coming up, but she decided that she was not going to add this year to her age since, after all, she hasn't used it at all.
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Well, speaking of the year, I found it a bit amusing and maybe a tad cliche, actually, that a lot of places, and especially churches, were trying to capitalize on the fact that this year is 2020.
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So at the end of last year and beginning of this year, you'd see some slogans like a 2020 vision for 2020 or looking ahead with 2020 vision.
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So that was in January. Now, five and a half months later, they're saying, whoa, never saw that coming.
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So much for 2020 vision. Well, speaking of vision, on Wednesday, I challenged us, myself included, and maybe especially, to think about what we see when we're watching the crowds of protesters and rioters on the news.
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What did you see when you opened the paper this morning and saw the photos of the 150 -plus people who gathered for a vigil last night?
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What did you see? Maybe you saw a conflict between people who have had loved ones pass away and they can't have a funeral of more than 10 people, and yet that...
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What did you see? What did you see? What will you see if you catch a parade today marching across the bridge from Sterling to Rock Falls?
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What do you see when you see the crowds? Well, then, yesterday, I wanted us to consider the question, where are you looking?
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Not only what are you seeing, but where are you looking? I suppose there's a bunch of possible answers to that question, but I really want to focus on and I'm interested in two that are presented to us in the
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Songs of Ascent. Just as a reminder, these Songs of Ascent comprise 15 psalms,
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Psalms 120 to 134, that served as kind of a songbook for the
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Jewish pilgrims as they made their way from their homes to Jerusalem three times a year.
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They had these three, they called them pilgrim festivals, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.
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During these three times, the pilgrims would journey from their homes to Jerusalem and along the way, they would sing these brief songs, easy to memorize and therefore easy to sing when the opportunity came up.
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So as they journeyed, these pilgrims, they would keep their eyes peeled on the hills because the hills were potential hiding places for would -be bandits and robbers and thugs.
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So then they'd sing Psalm 121, I lift up my eyes under the hills, from where does my help come?
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And then they would resolve the tension of that question with the answer, my help comes from the
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Lord who made heaven and earth. So one option is you can look at the hills, the threats, the dangers, the potential assaults that would make you another victim like those you're seeing on the news, and that can simply paralyze you unless you keep going back to your only real source of security.
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My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. So the hills, they loom large and they seem so threatening if we keep looking there.
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But another song of ascent offers a better alternative of a place to look. Psalm 123 uses a couple of related similes to help illustrate this better alternative for us.
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Verse 2, Psalm 123 says this, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid servant looks to the hand of her mistress.
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So you have those two similes of servants, the eyes of a servant looking to the hand of his master, the eyes of a maid servant looking to the hand of her mistress.
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Now these similes are intended to emphasize two important components in the relationship between servant -master, maid -servant -mistress.
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Two, I want to focus on these two emphases. One is the component of authority and power.
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So by the servant looking to the hand of the master or mistress, he or she is recognizing the authority of that master or mistress to direct action.
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The power to ensure that it's carried out lies with the one whose hand they're looking.
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So they realize that as they stand there and look at that person, the master or mistress, all that person has to do is move the hand and the servant responds.
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So one of the emphases is authority and power. The other component is that of patience.
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How long will the servants wait? Well, they'll wait until the master or mistress decides to move the hand.
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Maybe you've seen this in movies of some kind or another. Think of a castle scene where the king and the queen are sitting on their thrones and in front of them, right in front of them, there may be some petitioners asking for some kind of favor or perhaps jesters entertaining the royalty.
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But off to the side, saying nothing, doing nothing, but just standing silently, motionless, are some royal servants.
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They're just standing there with their eyes focused on the thrones, waiting for the king or the queen to summon them to action.
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Patience. Patience. Now, let me emphasize that in Psalm 123, the imagery of these similes is not concerned with the actions of the servants.
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In other words, the emphasis is not that the servants are waiting to do something. The emphasis is on the authority and power of the master or mistress and the patience of the servant or maidservant as they wait for their master to act.
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So with that imagery in mind, the song begins, Psalm 123, it begins this way.
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To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens.
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Then come the similes. As the eyes of the servant look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of the maidservant to the hand of her mistress, and then the application.
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So our eyes look to the Lord, our God. We look upon him as the all -powerful, authoritative master who, with a mere motion of the hand, the slightest word from his mouth, will accomplish his purposes.
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And we look upon him patiently. We may stand and look for a long time, and while we're doing that, we could get our attention off of the hand of the
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Lord, and we could look at what we think needs attention. We could look at what we think needs to be done.
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And as we're looking at these things, we may wonder why he's not using his power and authority to solve the thing that we're looking at.
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And the thing is, we may actually be suffering while we wait. Listen to the lament of the psalm.
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The end of the psalm, it says, we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease of the contempt of the proud.
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So the pilgrims, as they're singing this, they're lamenting the contempt of those who don't want to have anything to do with them and are scorning them for their travels to Jerusalem.
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And yet, in that lament, they say, our eyes are looking to the
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Lord, our God. So what are we waiting for? What are we waiting for?
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As we look upon him and we look patiently to the all -powerful, authoritative master, what are we waiting for?
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We're looking to the Lord, our God, to our authoritative, powerful master, looking patiently.
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But for what? Here's the rest of verse two, as the songwriter draws the connection between the similes and the suffering.
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He says this, as the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master, and as the eyes of a maid servant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the
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Lord, our God, till he has mercy upon us, which is immediately followed by a prayer for the waiting to end.
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Have mercy upon us, O Lord. Have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.
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You and I have had more than enough of chaos, of corruption, of contemptuous behavior, of all kinds of hateful rhetoric and anger and unrestrained brutality.
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We've had enough of this. We've had more than enough of this. Where are we looking for answers, for help, for deliverance?
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Are we looking to the White House? Are we looking to Washington? Are we looking to Congress, Springfield, City Hall, the
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Pentagon? No, no, no. Our eyes must be lifted up to the one who sits enthroned in the heavens, the
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Lord, our God, till he has mercy on us, using whatever or whomever the motion of his hand determines.
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Our eyes must be looking to him. I'd like to close today with a prayer
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I came across in the little book I read each morning. It has just a page. It's called
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Praying with the Psalms. The writer takes a psalm and then focuses on one verse of that psalm, and then he closes with a prayer.
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Interestingly, this page wasn't in Psalm 123. It was in Psalm 70 -something.
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But the closing prayer, as he applied that verse from the psalm, the closing prayer,
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I thought, is absolutely appropriate for what we're dealing with today. So let's look to the
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Lord, our God, the Almighty One, the all -powerful One, in prayer.
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Lord, God of hosts, set the experience of our present trouble firmly in the structure of your great acts of salvation.
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And then, Lord, help us to believe that your way is being worked out, even in the chaos of this world that we live in.
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We pray this through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen. Well, I trust you'll have a good rest of your
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Friday, and you'll have a restful weekend. And if you can make it on Sunday morning to the church, we'll be having an outdoor service,
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Lord willing. The weather looks like it'll be very cooperative for that. So an outdoor service at 10 .30
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Sunday morning. If you can't make that, you can join us online for Sunday morning service, 10 .30
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this week. All right. Have a good weekend, and may God bless you with a very rich one.