A Future -Guest Devotional by John Fields
This week I sat outside a dialysis clinic in another city, waiting to take someone home. Many vehicles came and went, dropping off or picking up patients. One person who came near my car said he had been there over four hours.
They were there to have a future—to gain some time and to live some more though their kidneys no longer could sustain life on their own. Given the option to not go through the discomfort and fatigue of three-times-a-week treatment but not live very long, they courageously chose life and future. How glad are you that God has advanced medicine at this time in history to give these brave ones life!
In our series on the Psalms, we come to Psalm 87. I join W. Graham Scroggie in his invitation: “Read this thrilling Song half-a-dozen times, and then face up to life and all its problems again with new hope and courage.” Here it is:
On the holy mount stands the city He founded;
the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.
Among those who know Me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
Behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush—“This one was born there,” they say.
And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her”;
For the Most High Himself will establish her.
The LORD records as he registers the peoples,
“This one was born there.”
Singers and dancers alike say, “All my springs are in you.”
This is a psalm about the coming hope and certainty of Christ’s ultimate rule and reign in His Messianic Kingdom from Jerusalem. God is Yahweh, Most High, Lover of Jerusalem, and Registrar of the book of life. Enemies of God and each other will join hands; obstinate, rebellious nations judged. About the last verse, one commentator notes for those dedicated to the kingdom’s King, “’Springs’ is a metaphor for the source of joyful blessings. Eternal salvation, including the death and resurrection of Christ, is rooted in Jerusalem [Zion]. The prophets also tell of a literal fountain flowing from the temple in Jerusalem that will water the surrounding land (cf. Joel 3:18; Ezek. 47:1-2).”
“Zion,” though an actual hill, is used poetically when special significance is given to Jerusalem. It is emotional and soul stirring. God has specifically chosen Jerusalem for His plans for earth, you, and me. Do you love Zion (Jerusalem)? Do you love His plans for now and then?
Psalm 87 is a call to live with certainty in unsettled personal and national times. Like the courageous ones facing their greatest challenge at the dialysis clinic, living with pain but focused beyond it to their future in Messiah, we too have a future of incalculable joy and celebration and hope.
See you there?