Today, I am reading and commenting on  Psalms 68-71.

The psalmist calls the righteous to be glad and rejoice before, because God is the One who saves.  He defends widows and acts as a father to the fatherless.  The psalmist tells us that God provides families to the lonely, which gives us a model for how the Church should be.  Do you know someone who is alone in this world?  Be as family to them. Be there for them.

Reading today’s passage I pulled various phrases out to comment on, then I went back and re-read the passage to try and put together what I wanted to write.  In the previous passage I wrote my thoughts as inspired by one of those phrases.  The next phrase I pulled out to write about is:

Lord, the Lord Almighty,
may those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me;

I have always read that as asking God to keep me from doing anything which will bring disgrace upon others who profess their faith and trust in God.  However, as I read it today, I saw that in the rest of Psalm 69 the psalmist speaks of those who seek to destroy him and hold him guilty of crimes he had not committed.  That, and his prayers contained here for God to deliver him from his enemies who belittle him for seeking to serve God put it in a different light.  Let us echo the psalmist and seek God’s salvation from our enemies, for our sake, and for the sake of others who seek to serve God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.