Psalm # 18: 1 & 2, 16 & 17, 25 & 26a, & 48
Preached: 30 May 2010 Des Arc First UMC Nursing Home
Today in the Main church service at the UMC we are talking about
how do we praise the Lord?
That is a good question on many levels.
Today’s Psalm is a hymn of joy for a victory over the enemies of
a King probably King Josiah.
It is a song of thanksgiving and praise.
How many of us also need to sing such a song of thanksgiving and
praise in our lives.
Every week at church I ask the congregation for their Concerns, Joys
and Celebrations.
Invariably I get a lot of prayer requests for the sick and those
homebound and those who need help from the Lord. But I rarely get
any thanksgiving and celebrations in the lives of people.
I don’t know if they are so expectant of receiving these things
that they have forgotten how to give thank for them, or they are
just to shy to speak up about them.
I remember an old cartoon where two individuals were hungry and
had little if anything to eat. They had holes in their shoes and had
tightened their belts until you could see their backbones through
their stomachs. I also remember one scene where they were sitting
down for supper and they had two beans to eat and they each said a
blessing and thanks for that bean and then proceeded to eat it as if
it was a feast.
Some of you lived through what now is called the Great
Depression. But we all know there was nothing great about it.
Two years ago we went through a minor adjustment to our economy
where the stock market took a major downturn and the housing bubble
burst. I saw where
people are now walking away for houses they agreed to purchase for
Half a million dollars and more,
because those houses are now under water and are worth less
than what is owed on them.
Since when is it ok to just forget about our word and do
whatever we like, whenever we want, just because we don’t like it.
This adjustment is nothing compared to families loosing their
homes because they had not jobs and had no prospects of having one
anytime soon. Back then
you could put all your needed possession in the back of a ton and a
Half truck and set of for new horizons. Today it takes three moving
vans and a SUV just to move around the corner.
Even the poorest in this country have cable TV’s hooked up to
Cable or satellite dishes. They have Air Conditioning, and reliable
appliances. They have a bed generally for each individual if not a
room for each one also. They generally have at least one car and
food enough to feed their families if they need it.
They get medical care and health care and food stamps and
other things and they still think of themselves as deprived if they
can not get their cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. Let alone being
able to play the lottery where they expect to win it all.
When I was in Mexico several years ago I lived with a family who
had two sons and a daughter. They also had lost one other son.
They had to go out and buy water in a bottle that was suitable
for drinking. They cooked on an old propane fueled stove that saw
it’s better days at least 4 decades ago. They had build their house
with their own hands on a piece of property most of us would not
have put a shed up on. And they did it with scraps they found and
packing crates. They
owned a total of 1 living room chair and one couch. They had 4
kitchen chairs and had to use a can of water to flush their toilet
if the sewer system was not blocked up.
The father had run his own power into the house from a pole a
mile away and they had two bedrooms where they slept on the floor on
mattresses.
And this man was the Head Quality Control inspector of Motorola
and had been for 14 years.
I have seen in the Philippians houses that were little more than
sticks nailed together and the bathroom was a hole out back. And
this was in a town of 2 million people.
I have seen and know of extreme poverty I this world where
families try to live on as little as $ 4 a day for food.
And we as a people think we have it so bad, that we can not
think of what we should be thankful for.
Most of the world has an expectancy of death at around 40 years,
our is now in the upper 70s.
Most of the world has to walk at least a mile to get drinking
water. We have only to turn on a tap.
Most of the world is fearful of war and being in the wrong place
at the wrong time and ending up a refugee. We are fearful if we have
to drive one block out of our way to go get our groceries.
How do we sing Praises to our Lord.
Well we better start singing them loud and strong for we truly
are a blessed people living in a blessed country.
Yes we have problems
Yes everything is not perfect for us
But it could be so much worse and is in so many other places.
So what victories do you want to sing about today and what do
you want to celebrate. Even though we think ourselves as
downtrodden—we still have an obligation to help those who have so
much less than we do ourselves.
Mother Teresa said “ The more you have, the more you are
occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you
are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not a
mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom.
There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are
perfectly happy. The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted,
the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.”
What Jesus in disguise do you need to find and help today?