Psalm 41

¹Blessed is he who considers the poor;
The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.
² The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive,
And he will be blessed on the earth;
You will not deliver him to the will of his enemies.
³ The Lord will strengthen him on his bed of illness;
You will sustain him on his sickbed.

⁴ I said, “Lord, be merciful to me;
Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.”
⁵ My enemies speak evil of me:
“When will he die, and his name perish?”
⁶ And if he comes to see me, he speaks lies;
His heart gathers iniquity to itself;
When he goes out, he tells it.

⁷ All who hate me whisper together against me;
Against me they devise my hurt.
⁸ “An evil disease,” they say, “clings to him.
And now that he lies down, he will rise up no more.”
⁹ Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted,
Who ate my bread,
Has lifted up his heel against me.

¹⁰ But You, O Lord, be merciful to me, and raise me up,
That I may repay them.
¹¹ By this I know that You are well pleased with me,
Because my enemy does not triumph over me.
¹² As for me, You uphold me in my integrity,
And set me before Your face forever.

¹³ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
From everlasting to everlasting!
Amen and Amen.

Blessed is he who considers the poor

I certainly can’t speak for everyone else, but I know that often times I can be a “Sunday Christian.” It’s easy to be, right. You go to church on Sunday, and throughout the rest of the week, you have some vague idea that God is out there, maybe calling on Him once or twice for really super-important things.

Even when I’m better than that in my spiritual life, I struggle with what exactly I’m supposed to be doing to share God. It’s not that I don’t want to be a better Christian. I just don’t know how all the time. Maybe it’s the easiest thing in the world for you to walk up to someone and start talking about Christ. An old pastor I had seemed to think that was the way to do things. Being an extreme introvert, though, it sometimes takes a lot of energy for me to talk to a lot of people about anything. I felt like a failure, like I wasn’t doing what God wanted me to because the first words out of my mouth when meeting a new person weren’t along the lines of “do you know how to get to Heaven?”

Then, some things changed for me. First, two women dressed in jean skirts knocked on my door. I was partially annoyed because I was watching Vampire Diaries (don’t judge) and they were interrupting my break before I had to get back to work. But, as long as they were just inviting me to church, it was no problem. I said thank you, but they didn’t go away. They asked me if I was a born again Christian. I replied that I was, but they still didn’t go away. They asked me how I knew for sure. I shut the door in their faces. I suddenly realized how it felt to be on the receiving end of this offensive Christianity, and it wasn’t fun. It made me wonder how they can possibly get anyone interested in Christ. They came to my home, interrupted what I was doing, and interrogated me. I think they may have been doing more harm than good.

Then, just this past Sunday, I heard a speaker who said that only about 10% of believers are gifted with evangelism. If you’re not one of them, God doesn’t expect you to be out there evangelizing (not that we should use that as an excuse when He wants something done, Moses). He’s given you a different gift, and he expects you to use that. It reminded me of an argument that made me feel a lot better when I first went to college. We often think that God wants us all to be ministers and Sunday School teachers and probably sing in the choir too. If we’re going to teach, it should be at a Christian school, if we’re going to work the fryers, we should go to Chick-fil-a. But, that’s not the fact. God has planned something different for each of us. I, for example, am quite confident that God wanted me to be in the Classics department at KU where I study people from the past who were “Pagans” and for a time were even making it their business to kill Christians. And I love them. Do I know why I’m here? No, but that doesn’t matter. I know that it’s where I’m supposed to be.

So, what does all this have to do with the psalm, you ask? Well…I don’t know. I got a little off-course. But, I do have a point. Our faith is so much more than religion. We are called to do things that have nothing to do with our religion because we are meant to be that light in dark places (when all other lights go out?). In this psalm, as well as in many places throughout the Bible, God calls us to community service. Here, the one who considers the poor is blessed—the person who is out with the needy, the homeless, orphans, the sick, the downtrodden in general, and anyone who could just use a helping hand. We aren’t called to go door to door selling religion. We are called to go help people who need it, and through our compassion and willingness to serve others, show Christ to everyone, not only the people we’re helping, but all the people around us.

As for me, You uphold me in my integrity,
And set me before Your face forever.

When we consider the poor lots of stuff happens in between, and in the end, this promise comes. God upholds our integrity and keeps us with Him forever. What is integrity? In a loose definition, it can be “moral uprightness,” which is a fine definition. I was thinking of its Latin root, integer, which means something like “untouched” in its base meaning. But, it can also mean “fresh,” “unexhausted,” or “free from prejudice,” all definitions which would be great when we consider the original beatitude of this psalm. We are to seem fresh to those who are far from God, to show them his peace; we must be unexhausted as we work His plans; we ought to be free from prejudice when we work with those who are less fortunate or who don't know God. Only when we’ve done this can we fulfill God’s command to help the poor and attain blessing for it.