263rd Meditation
“If the Lord does not build a house in vain do its builders toil.
If the Lord does not guard a city in vain does its guard keep watch” (Ps 126:1).
Our Father reminds us of the foundation of our life. In the German language we have a saying that reflects what this verse of the psalm expresses: “On God’s grace all things depend”.
In fact, it should be the most natural thing for us, and yet we need to be reminded of it again and again, because we so easily forget it. We tend to rely on our own strength and do not sufficiently realise that it is God who gives us both the abilities we need in our lives and the success of what we undertake.
In our modern world, in which almost everything is feasible, human beings are in danger of becoming more and more presumptuous. They even want to build a world without God, in order to control it themselves. Yet they would not be able to survive a single hour if it were not for the Father’s keeping them alive. What blindness, what a misjudgement of reality!
Thus, this verse of the psalm is an emphatic reminder of the Father, bringing home to us a simple and basic truth, as well as conveying a profound assurance. Indeed, it is a joy for a person of faith to hear this passage of the psalm: it is a joy to know that one is protected by God and does not depend only on one’s own limited strength.
What counts for the material house counts even more for the inner house: it is the Lord who wants to build it in us and to make His dwelling in it. It is also He who watches over us, so that we do not get lost in this world or fall into the snares of the devil.
We would not be able to build the outer house or the inner house if the Father were not with us. Much less would we be able to build a better world in our own strength.
With God, on the other hand, everything is possible. Built with Him and founded on Him, all houses – whether exterior or interior – will endure.
The world can also change, if only it listens to the Father and puts itself at His service.