Recently, during a pretty typical conversation at work with my manager, she asked me this question: “So what’s been motivating you lately?” A fairly innocuous and usual question, but I’d been thinking about Psalm 127 and, playing this conversation back in my head later, it got me feeling as though God was asking me that question about my walk with Him. What has been motivating me in life lately? Has it been my own ambitions, pursuits of my own accomplishment and provision of my own supply; or has it been pursuing God, and what He has given me? Have I been thankful for & driven by the works of my own hand, or by the works of His hand guiding me?
Psalm 127 lays out the simple fact that if we’re motivated solely by our own work and the whim of whatever we can find to bide our time, we’re pouring ourselves into temporary distractions that will be crushingly disappointing. Anything we can do is done in vain, when we do it because we only trust the work of our own hands over God’s. My mind goes to Ecclesiastes – all is meaningless and vain if you don’t remember the Creator. But on the flip side, any work and labor we do to honor our portion graciously given to us & to glorify Him and His kingdom becomes an act of glorification and thankfulness.
Verses 1 and 2 of this passage repeat this idea of toiling in vain; this makes me think of Jesus’s words in Matthew 6:25-27: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” When we needless run ourselves way too thin doing as much as we can because we misplace all the burden of providing on ourselves, are we reflecting Jesus’s assurances against our anxieties? When we stay up at night losing sleep because we’re worried about our work, our family life, our finances, our house, etc., who should we be listening to: Satan whispering lies of failure and fear into our ear, or God telling us He’s got it handled? Rather than needing to dwell on our concerns alone, God offers a reprieve from the shackles of worry through trusting that He provides what is fair and necessary.
And yes, this includes trusting God’s plan for your children! The latter half of this passage goes into the blessings of growing your family – and it’s no mistake these two topics going together. I’m not a parent myself, but between my own parents, my mentors with now-adult kids, and my younger friends having children right now, I’ve seen how raising your children to grow into good, God-centered people can be difficult at all steps. As this psalm says, the end result a blessing and reward from God. But this increasingly stressful path is one that requires putting your trust in God, that He has great plans to grow and watch over your young. You can put all the effort into your parenting possible and worry endlessly over your children, but no matter what you do, Christ alone saves His followers (John 10:28, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand”). Knowing Jesus is watching over your loved ones as they walk through life with Him has been a valuable encouragement for me – I pray it would be for you too.
Now, this is convicting for me to write, because I am definitely not without sin in this area. Almost everyone I know gets too worried about something from time to time. But I know God speaks through the most opportune moments – and I pray he would remind you to offer up your need for control as well today. Pray for conviction to recognize the need to surrender our feelings to God in times of toil; for wisdom and insight into how His word and His Scripture can deliver peace and spiritual rest; for a radical trust that will allow God to shine a light of unfailing hope through your life; and that in whatever you do, you would do it for the glory of Christ.