Verse for the week of January 10th:
O LORD, give strength to your people; give them, O LORD, the blessings of peace.
(Psalm 29:11)
This whole Psalm is a hymn of praise to God who is above all things and mightier than all of creation. The Psalm ends with a word of prayer, ‘O LORD, give strength to your people; give them, O LORD, the blessings of peace.’ This is asking God to be with them in all ways.
What a wonderful prayer for all of us. This could be a daily prayer that one could use—‘O LORD, give strength to your people.’
I know that many times, it is easy to attempt to do things ourselves rather than trust in God. We tend to think that we can do whatever we set our minds to. After all our culture teaches us that we can accomplish anything we work at enough. However, this is not always true. Sometimes when we continue to work at something, all we do is tend to make it worse.
I think that there is some type of contraption that when it is used to confine a person, the more the person struggles with it the tighter it becomes. The reality is that in order to escape one needs to relax and not struggle against it and then it comes off. This is a paradox for most people.
This is a classic lesson for most of us in our faith life. We need to turn things over to God and then trust that God is in control and will give us strength.
It echoes St. Paul when he writes, ‘I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.’ (Philippians 4:13)
As we live out of lives, it is go easy to think that we have everything under control that we forget the most important thing—to trust in God and pray that God will give us strength in all that we do.
Perfect timing for this lesson. I just finished a marathon, which was the single hardest thing I’ve ever done. The race is 26 miles long, but the halfway point is really mile 18. That’s when race is no longer physical but mental. I started thinking about my friends and family who were supporting me to push through the pain. I also repeated Luke 1:37, “With the Lord nothing is impossible.” It’s nice to have a fuel source that won’t run out.
God gave us the ability to dream to do things bigger than we can achieve by ourselves. Thankfully, if we rely on Him, we are given the strength and resources we need to reach our goals.