You worked hard and deserve all you've got coming.
Enjoy the blessing! Revel in the goodness!
3-4 Your wife will bear children as a vine bears grapes,
your household lush as a vineyard,
The children around your table
as fresh and promising as young olive shoots.
Stand in awe of God's Yes.
Oh, how he blesses the one who fears God!
5-6 Enjoy the good life in Jerusalem
every day of your life.
And enjoy your grandchildren.
Peace to Israel! (Psalm 128 Message)
Last night I came upon this passage and got a chuckle out of verse 3, which in the NLT says, "Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table." I was laughing as I was fast-forwarding a few years to have four vigorous and hungry teenage boys sitting around our table and how much food they will consume!
And it reminded me of the children of this world who are in need of physical, emotional, or spiritual nourishment. So, we remember and pray...
- for children who do not have enough food to eat
- for children who spend their lives in orphanages or foster care
- for children who never are held, or laughed with, or smiled at, or hugged, or who never know what it means to be loved
- for the child of the journalist convicted and sentenced to hard labor in North Korea
- for children growing up and learning to hate other people
- for the millions who have been aborted over the last thirty plus years
- for the octuplets born in California and for the children of Jon & Kate
- for other children in unstable or ungodly family situations
- for Sasha and Melia, growing up in the artificial bubble of the White House
- for children whose circumstances force them to grow up long before they should
- for children pressed into military or terrorist organizations
- for children used or sold in the world sex trades
- for children whose parents are ill, divorcing, or otherwise going through trauma
- for children whose differences or disabilities are seen as liabilities by others
- for children who are being uprooted when parents have to relocate to support the family
- for children who have never heard of the love, grace, hope and peace offered through Jesus Christ
God, we pray that your protection would be on all the children you create. We pray you would help us to help these children be fresh, promising, and vigorous. We pray your Word would be known to them and they would have their needs met. And we pray for hope and peace through Jesus Christ.
God in heaven, I make my prayer
For all the people everywhere
Who live in fear or pain or doubt;
Whose homes are gone, and hopes run out.
God in heaven, I make my prayer
For all the children everywhere
Who live in terrible, warring places;
Who live with hunger and strange, sad faces.
God in heaven, I make my prayer
For all good people everywhere
Who live in comfort, love and peace,
And pray sincerely for strife to cease;
But who do not always hear the call
Of those who live with nothing at all.
God in heaven, hear my prayer!
Help all people everywhere
To come closer together in plenty and need,
And to make our world your home, indeed. *
AMEN
*("Prayer for Today"By Margaret Tucker, text by Mary M. Coulson)
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