Praying For Strength To Trust God and Focus on Doing Good

VACCINE DISTRIBUTION

I don’t know if the discussions are as loud where you live as they are here in Canada but at the top of the news for days are two things:  increased travel restrictions to try to contain the spread of these new covid-19 virus variants and reduced vaccine doses being shipped to Canada from Pfizer and Moderna.  How much of the rhetoric around this second issue is political rhetoric and how much is warranted scrutiny of government inadequacies I’m not in a position to know.  What I do know is that there is a great race on right now to get as many people vaccinated as possible before there’s a huge spike in covid-sick folks from the new variants.  We’ll see how it all goes. 

Over and over again as we see the breathtaking numbers of those infected with the disease and hospitalization rates and death numbers we are reminded that each of these people is someone’s mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter.  Having walked through all of this with Mom when she was diagnosed positive in December, that fact only hits home even closer. 

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be able to turn to God’s word every day and find words of comfort and hope and help.  What do people do who don’t know the Lord and His goodness?  How do they face the daunting challenges this season provides for all of us? 

And so we return today to some very familiar words.  My friend Evelyn and I read through the Psalms on a liturgical calendar and so the same Psalms come back around.  There is a morning calendar and an evening one and sometimes we seem to get the same Psalms twice in one week – maybe God is trying to tell us something!!  I’m not sure what He’s saying when we get to the Psalms with “the dogs” passages.  We laugh a bit and read along each time they come up, although vicious dogs are a great picture of those who threaten, speak, and do evil to others.

At evening they return, they growl like a dog, and go all around the city.  Psalm 59:6 

Anyway, on a much lovelier space came Psalm 37 these days.  Let’s pray a few of those verses today.

Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Psalm 37:1-2

Heavenly Father, we need your help so we don’t fret about difficult things going on around us.  We have racism in so many forms, greed on the stock market, queue jumpers for vaccines, gang violence on our streets, human trafficking of young lives, and the ugly list goes on and on.  Lord, help us today to do all we can to combat these wrongs but also to not let their evil overtake us and fill us with hate.  “Hate the sin and love the sinner” is the old saying and would you help us to apply it in the right way in our situations in our times.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.  Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.  Psalm 37:3-4

These are such familiar words but we don’t want to miss what we are supposed to do to make all this goodness come alive in our lives.  Help us to trust You God.  Keep our focus on doing good not on what others are doing.  Give us courage to live in this day, not hankering after the way things used to be or striving for the future return to ordinary living to get here more quickly than it should. You are faithful to us and that will continue in this day.  Keep our focus there, we pray.  Give us the discipline to look for all Your goodness that is in us and surrounding us in spite of the challenges with this virus, these more dangerous variants, and the rollout of the vaccine against it.  Our hope, our stability, our happiness come from You, not our circumstances.  We’ve said it before but we know we need to keep reminding ourselves of this fact when things are challenging.

Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.  He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.  Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; Do not fret—it only causes harm.  Psalm 37:5-8

Well Lord, the committing, trusting, and resting always seem like the easy part but they are not possible unless we also do the waiting, not fretting, and letting go of anger.  We so easily focus on the wrong-doers and get wound up because of the harm they cause or the evil they seem to get away with.  Help us to remember that when we focus on that, we only bring more harm to ourselves, our ability to serve You well, and often to innocent 3^rd parties who we come in contact with when we are angry or stressed. 

So here we are once again, in the middle of stormy times committing ourselves to You.  Help us to keep simple, do good, and feed on Your faithfulness today.  Amen

Well there are tons more lovely verses in that Psalm.  Why not take a moment and give it a read for yourself – Psalm 37.  It will do your heart good, believe me.