Psalms 146:1-10
Turning the World Upside Down

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!

I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
    I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
    on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the LORD their God,
Who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them;
Who keeps faith forever;
    who executes justice for the oppressed;
    who gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets the prisoners free;
    the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the strangers;
    he upholds the orphan and the widow,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The LORD will reign forever,
    your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the LORD!

New Revised Standard Version

Our God has always been in the business of turning the world upside down!

The writer of this Psalm praises God for reversing the "pecking order" of that generation. Those who were the most oppressed at that time--the orphans, the widows, the strangers--were the ones that God blessed with abundance. The oppressed, who were too insignificant to be heard by the rulers, could get an audience with and a fair judgement from the Creator of all things!

On the other hand, those who were in power were frail in comparison to God. Their time is short, their might and influence is limited, and they will all fall away.

This all sounds positive and uplifting to us, until we start to examine our station in life. The writer of this psalm referred to God's goodness towards those whose situation was desperate: orphans in a day before there were children's homes, widows before there were employment opportunities for women, blind people before there were laws and an infrastructure to support them, and people oppressed by monarchs who paid no heed to the concept of "justice." Most of us reading this meditation are in far better shape than these outcasts of ancient society. In fact, we are more like the princes the psalmist mentioned, with enough wealth and authority to have some degree of control over our lives and find some level of comfort and enjoyment from our worldly possessions. We could be the "bad guys" in this psalmist's eyes!

So, why is God so opposed to the status quo? What is wrong with being the way we are, instead of being destitute and desperate?

The answer lies in where we find our strength. The psalmist calls out princes who rule by might, wealth, and domination. These are people who "have" at the expense of those who "have not." Those who wield their own power are the ones most reluctant to depend on God for help. The poorest in the land would place their whole hope on God, for there was no other hope. The rich and powerful would rather depend on their own strengths than place all their hope on God. We may not abuse the weak, pay poverty wages to our servants, and take whatever we want from those who are weak--but if we choose to trust our own plans and ways, we are like the princes in this psalm, and our plans will fail. In the same way, we can choose to trust God as completely as those who otherwise are hopeless, and God will bless us just as surely as the psalmist wrote of God's blessings to the oppressed and hungry.

There are two lessons for us, then, in this psalm. The first is that our God does turn the world upside down when that is what it takes to establish and grow our individual relationships with God. What is so important to us "princes" is meaningless in God's eternal view. The second lesson, following from the first, is that we should never trust in what is in the world, but instead, we should base our hope entirely on God.