Saturday, July 25, 2015

Psalm 112:2 – “Targeted Kindness”


As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

Praise the LORD.

1Blessings of a man – he fears the LORD.
    In His commands he delights greatly.
2Mighty in the land his descendants will be.
    A generation of upright ones will be very blessed.

I’ve been pondering verse 2 for a while. I find it spawns a lot of seemingly random thoughts in my head. I’ll note of few of them in hopes they’ll gel into something useful.

To promise to bless my children (and grandchildren) I consider to be one of the Lord’s greatest kindnesses. I certainly enjoy His blessings of my sweet wife, my good job, beautiful house, reasonable health, etc., but, no matter all of that, when I think of blessing, my mind always goes to my children. I presume it is a normal parent thing, but, in a sense, it is like “blessing” is an empty thing if it doesn’t extend to them. I want to be blessed. I want to spend eternity in Heaven; but even as I am assured of those things for myself, my mind again wanders to them. I want to be assured they’ll be there too. Even as I enjoy knowing God, even as I live in awe of His goodness and kindness to me, I want to know they’ll get to enjoy all of this too. If it’s just for me, there is a sense in which it’s not enough. “Blessing” must include them.

I’ve thought before that if I could just be assured all my children and grandchildren would know the Lord, love Him, and spend eternity with Him, it’s like I could just lay down and die. I could say with old Simeon, “Lord, lettest now Thy servant depart in peace, for mines eyes have seen Thy salvation.” It’s like my work would be done.

And so, I run into passages like Psalm 112:2 and I think what a kindness it is. In verse 1, we are introduced to the man who “fears the Lord and delights greatly in His commands.” Beginning in verse 2, this psalm enumerates the blessings such a man enjoys and what do we find at the top of the list? His children.

Isn’t that an amazing kindness of the Lord? What He is basically saying to me is that, if I seek to follow Him, to make the choices I must make to live my life for Him, in one way or another He promises to bless my children! He promises to me the one thing that makes all other blessings complete.

I say all of this fully realizing this is a dangerous place to make 100% claims. Whenever the Lord makes seeming promises regarding our children, there is always the element of their own wills. And there is also the element of my own imperfect obedience. No matter what I choose, I certainly won’t do it perfectly, and no matter what I may do, my children and grandchildren will always have to make their own choices. So I’m painfully having to accept in my mind that this is not a 100% promise. Just because I love the Lord doesn’t automatically guarantee that all of my descendants will. I wish it could. I wish there was anything I could do to insure their blessing.

But I think we can enjoy this even as a general promise and I will take it that way – that, if I choose to love the Lord, then, in general, I can be assured it will benefit my descendants. My family will be blessed just for the sake of me.

It would be interesting to know if the blessings I enjoy are flowing from some ancestor’s lives and prayers. Maybe some godly old great-great grandfather or grandmother read this same verse and had the same thoughts as I sit having today. I remember reading a book written in the 15 or 1600’s and it started with a prayer where the author said something like, “Lord, if years from now, someone finds this book …” and I thought to myself, “Here I sit, an answer to that man’s prayer! He prayed the Lord’s blessing on me over 400 years ago and now I sit with that very book in my hands!”

And what particular blessings are mentioned in this psalm? It says “His descendants will be mighty in the land.” It is literally “his seed,” so it can be translated “his children” or “his descendants.” It can specifically refer to his immediate descendants, his children and grandchildren, or it can include his descendants in general for many generations. And it says they will be “mighty.” The word itself is a warrior word and, I suppose today it could be translated something like “they will be heroes in the land.” I think the basic idea is that they’ll be people who do a lot of good. They won’t be the criminals and low-lifes who make everyone else miserable; but they also won’t just be survivors. They won’t just “occupy air space.” They’ll be people who make a difference. That again is a cool promise to me. I want to make a difference. I don’t want to be just a survivor. I want the world to be a better place because I was here. But, again, I want that blessing to extend to my children and their children after them. I want them all to be blessed. I want them to be happy. But I want them to be people who make other people’s lives better too. And I believe that is what the Lord is here saying -- The children of the godly will go on being a blessing to others for many generations.

I don’t know if the second half of the verse is referring to the godly man or to his descendants. It says, “A generation of upright ones will be very blessed.” Either way, the same truth is being expressed. The fact is that truly godly people are a blessing to their world. They will be the people who can be trusted, people who are gracious and forgiving and kind, people who work hard and who work hard to care for others. I personally strongly suspect that many of the scientific discoveries and advances that have blessed the human race were made by godly people. We’ll only know the truth of that in Heaven, but I suspect it’s true. And this psalm is assuring me that, if I really fear the Lord, I will be a blessing in my generation, and then that blessing will extend to my children and my descendants. They too will be a blessing.

I’ve always liked Psalm 84:5,6, “Blessed are those whose strength is in You … As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs …” The Valley of Baca is literally “the valley of tears,” which is a fitting name for this world. But that psalm assures us, as godly people pass through this troubled world, they make it a better place. They don’t just survive. They make it a better place for others passing through. They leave it a little better, perhaps a little softer. That is what I want to be and that is what I hope will be true of my descendants. Of Jesus Himself it is said, “He was a man ordained by God who went about doing good.” That’s what I want to be and that is what I want my descendants to be.

Once again, the Lord in His great kindness assures me those very wishes will be fulfilled.

His kindness is not only bountiful; it is also very targeted – at the very things our hearts want most.

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