The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection of Leawood, Kansas, United States Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 13 January 2015 "God cares for those who cannot help themselves"

The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection of Leawood, Kansas, United States Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 13 January 2015 "God cares for those who cannot help themselves"
Daily Scripture: Psalm 68:4 Our God, you are the one
who rides on the clouds,
    and we praise you.
Your name is the Lord,
    and we celebrate
    as we worship you.
5 Our God, from your sacred home
    you take care of orphans
    and protect widows.
6 You find families
    for those who are lonely.
You set prisoners free
    and let them prosper,[a]
    but all who rebel will live
    in a scorching desert.
[Footnotes:
68.6 and let them prosper: Or “and give them a song.”]
Psalm 82: (A psalm by Asaph.)
Please Do Something, God!
1 When all of the other gods[a]
    have come together,
    the Lord God judges them
    and says:
2 “How long will you
keep judging unfairly
    and favoring evil people?
3 Be fair to the poor
    and to orphans.
    Defend the helpless
    and everyone in need.
4 Rescue the weak and homeless
    from the powerful hands
    of heartless people.
[Footnotes:
82.1 the other gods: This probably refers to the gods of the nations that God defeated, but it could refer to God’s servants (angels) in heaven or even to human rulers.]
Reflection Questions:
To an orphan or a widow in Israel’s patriarchal world, it would have been nonsense to say, “God helps those who help themselves.” With no legal or social status, and no influential male relative to take their side, widows or orphans in that society simply had no way to “help themselves.” Yet again and again, in the psalms and in many of Israel’s laws, it was clear that God cared passionately about helping those who could not help themselves.
• Israel’s defining story was the Exodus, told in the first part of the book of Exodus and recalled every year at Passover. God delivered Israel from being held by the most powerful king on earth in helpless, hopeless slavery. When have you found help and freedom from a situation in which you felt helpless? In what ways can God’s help in the past become a basis for hope as you face future situations that feel hopeless?
• God most often acts through people. In what parts of life do the words of Psalm 82 speak most clearly to your heart: “Give justice to the lowly and the orphan; maintain the right of the poor and the destitute! Rescue the lowly and the needy. Deliver them from the power of the wicked”? For whom can you be God’s instrument to help those who cannot help themselves?
Prayer: Lord God, I trust you to be my help and my strength, even when all else fails me. Grow me into a person who can extend your help and strength to others who may desperately need them. Amen.

Insight from Rev. Glen Shoup

Rev. Glen Shoup is the Executive Pastor of Worship and a Congregational Care Pastor.

God helps those who can’t help themselves.

This truth was poignantly articulated in last weekend’s message (and if you missed worship, click here to watch ithttp://www.cor.org/worship/sermon-archives/show/sermons/God-Helps-Those-Who-Help-Themselves/) and this truth is captured in today’s readings.  For you see, even more pervasive in the biblical narrative than the fact that God expects us to exercise our own initiative to accomplishing His will and purposes for ourselves (which God sometimes does) is the fact that God expects us to exercise our own initiative to accomplish His will and purposes for others.

In the scriptural story, far more often than we see instances of people taking action with God’s blessing on their own behalf, we see people taking action with God’s blessing on behalf of others; and this reality is seen clearly in the admonitions we find in today’s reading.  In what we call Old Testament times (and things were basically the same in Jesus’ time), Patriarchy was king.  Which generally meant if you were a woman or a child—you had nothing apart from your connection to your husband or father (and if you had no husband or father, there were some societal contingencies, but those were often less than adequate because they were too often ignored).  Hence, God is relentless in countering the sinful creation of patriarchy with His clear admonition—in fact law (which when you hear the 10 commandments with ears attune to patriarchy, you hear God’s admonition much more fully)—that the widows and orphans be cared for…and God says this in scripture over and over again.  God makes unmistakable that His help for them is to come in the form of You (the “You” being those who would have been hearing and instructed in the law—which in that time would have been the men).

And bridging the cultural gap with God’s obsession to help those who can’t help themselves isn’t all that difficult—in fact it’s simple (which isn’t to say it’s easy—simple and easy aren’t the same thing—but it is simple): the widows and orphans in a patriarchal structure are anyone today—male or female—that is pushed down, ignored or cut out.  “Widows and orphans” are in every cultural setting and in every person’s frame of reference.  They’re the students who aren’t popular; the co-workers who are quiet, left out and odd; they’re the service workers who make life go in an affluent upwardly-mobile existence like most of us enjoy—the people who ring up our groceries, who serve us in the drive-thru or wait on our tables—you know, the folks we never notice unless we can’t quite understand their accent or deem they’re not serving us quickly enough or up to our standards as “the customer” (which in a culture built on consumerism rather than patriarchy means we—as the consumer—are the ones with the power and they should bow to our every whim because without us they wouldn’t even have that job, “cause you know, I can always take my business elsewhere”…)——-the “widows and orphans” are all around us in every one of our settings and frames of reference.

And God still cares as deeply for them now as He did millennia ago when they were principally victims of patriarchy as opposed to oligarchy.  The haves (which is mostly whose reading this) have a profound responsibility to exercise power and influence on behalf of the have-not’s—whether the have-not’s lack recognition, encouragement or opportunity…for while Godsometimes helps those who help themselves, God always helps those who can’t help themselves!

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