“Useless!” That was the first word of a sermon I heard some years ago, and it was very arresting. The speaker was R. C. Sproul, and what he said in the introduction to that sermon was that in all the English language, “useless” was the word he hated most, at least if it was applied to him. He was willing to work hard, to start early and labor late. He was willing to forego present pleasures or benefits. But not if it was useless! Not if what he did had no purpose! “Because,” he explained, “if you say that what I do is useless, you are saying that I am useless. And what that means is that somehow I don't count.” 

What does the psalmist do after he has remembered those earlier days in which “our mouths were filled with laughter”? As we read in yesterday’s study, one thing he does is ask God for the good times again. We see a second thing in today’s lesson.

What joy we have when we realize that God has operated powerfully in our lives in such ways, making us more like Jesus Christ than before. Yes, but it is not long before we come up against another besetting sin and become conscious of other, perhaps even more significant failures. Soon the former joy is only a faded memory. We wonder if these struggles will never end. Will we ever really be happy again? 

Early in this week's study I mentioned Thomas Cahill and his study of the role of the Irish in preserving learning during the dark ages. I return to him here because of what he has to say about St. Patrick, the young Roman who brought Christianity to Ireland. Patrick had been captured in England by Irish pirates when he was only sixteen years old and had been put to work as a slave for an Irish chieftain. He escaped after six years, returned to his family, but was then called by God to return to Ireland as a missionary. 

It is not only that God has become the foundation for his people's faith, which is what the mountain location of Jerusalem suggested to the author of Psalm 125. It is also the case that God surrounds his people, as the mountains surround Jerusalem.