Songs of the Great Ascent - Unless the Lord

Psalm 127

“Psalm 126 called us to the hard work of sowing and reaping, and to the disciplined endurance needed to keep going. Psalm 127 shifts the focus. Its emphasis is not simply on the effort required for life’s tasks, but on the worries that accompany them—worries that pile up, weigh us down, and can so easily wear us out” (Alec Motyer, Journey).

These are not unusual or exceptional burdens. They are the ordinary, inescapable pressures that come with ordinary obligations:

• the demands of work and provision

• the responsibilities of home and family

• the anxieties that gather around the future

Hence, Psalm 127 addresses enough anxiety-inducing topics to make anyone feel overwhelmed. Building a house brings plans, permits, contractors, dust, material delays, and the financial strain of bills and a mortgage. As if that were not enough, taxes, insurance, and HOA dues soon follow. Then children grow up, and the costs of babyhood give way to school fees—or, for many families, the steep expenses of travel ball, musical instruments and lessons, camps, and keeping up with the teenage Joneses. The list seems endless.

This psalm is talking about the daily grind, or life lived “in vain” as it puts it, at work and in family. The goal of the psalm is to show us how to see both family and work from God’s perspective so that the daily grind is beaten.

“This psalm is not about hymns and songs and organs and guitars and church, as good as those things are. It is not about Sunday worship and putting on your Sunday best. It is builders building. Laborers laboring. Guards guarding. Rising “early” and working “late,” what we call “burning the candle at both ends.” It is about couples with young children not being able to remember when they last had a whole night’s sleep. Farmers working from dawn to dusk to bring in the harvest. Shift workers with two jobs. The stuff of life, the daily grind. How do you beat it? you beat it by adopting the perspective of this psalm.” (Jonathan Cruse, Worshiping on the Way)

This psalm is painting a picture of reality, and it is asking you to watch and behold life like that. Eugene Peterson noted that “the greatest work project of the ancient world is a story of disaster. The unexcelled organization and enormous energy that were concentrated in building the Tower of Babel resulted in such a shattered community and garbled communications that civilization is still trying to recover.”

Psalm 127 shows us that seeing life as it were through the eyes of God, that is, with his perspective, is the way not to live in vain. So, how can we beat the daily grind?

Join us this coming Lord’s Day as we learn how to see life as God sees life.

By His Spirit,

Pastor Wayne