Psalm 23: 5 – 6
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Certainly goodness and faithfulness will follow me all the days of my life, and my dwelling will be in the house of the Lord forever.
Many of you have considered the 23rd Psalm in depth so I don’t want to retrace the same thoughts. None the less, this psalm is popular for good reason. It is packed with good news about our standing with God. I mean, how confident in God’s protection and provision must one be to sit down and have dinner in the midst of enemies?
I really wish, today, to focus on poverty. You can define and categorize poverty as fits your situation. When David wrote about the cup overflowing that means overflowing with friends, finances, health, etc. So, where do you need overflowing provision? It is right here in this psalm.
The language about the overflowing cup stood out to me but so did the idea that goodness and faithfulness are to follow us every day of our lives, every day! How can we be impoverished with those two following along with us daily? The reason these two parts stand out to me is because much of the church likes to enshrine poverty. We even pretend that Jesus was broke which just isn’t true. His garments were so fine that the soldiers gambled over them. You don’t do that over rags. But also, if Father God treated David so magnanimously, would He really let Jesus go around broke and destitute? I mean, really? David’s cup overflowed but Jesus was broke? I don’t buy it.
Sometimes we, church people, put such a high value on poverty that we say we are suffering for Christ or make up other such excuses. It is hard to bless God’s kids when you’re busy being broke. And Lord forbid we actually cause the cups of our pastors to overflow.
I think we need a shake-up from the neck up. We need to revise our thinking and revamp our vision of Christianity. We need to change our image of who God is and what He wants for us. He isn’t destitute so why should His kids be? Cups running over in every area of life, that is a vision I can sink my faith into.
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