Have you ever heard, or maybe read, something for the umpteenth time, and suddenly noticed a word or a phrase that you could swear wasn’t there the last time? It probably has something to do with familiarity; our eyes/ears process the words, but they don’t really register in our brains because we’re so familiar with the passage. Maybe another word or phrase captures our attention and so we overlook a piece of it. I know I’m not the only one to experience this phenomenon of magically appearing words; it comes up at least every other week or so in my mid-week Bible study group.
Such a thing happened this morning. It’s not an overstatement to say that I’ve read Psalm 147 more than 50 times, and an accurate count may well be over 100. But never before have I seen the second half of verse 2: “[the Lord] gathers the outcasts of Israel”. Verses 3 – with the Lord comforting and healing His people – and 4 – with the glimpse of majesty and power we get with the Lord numbering and naming all the stars – are where I’ve tended to focus in the past. This time, though, it was the word “outcasts”.
Outcasts. That doesn’t leave a great feel in our mouths, does it? It’s a word that carries with it pain and shame, an otherness that we’ve all more than likely experienced at some point in our lives, didn’t really enjoy, and are tempted to go to great lengths, perhaps sinfully so, to avoid that experience again. We’ve all been an outcast at some point, and the Lord gathers us in.
Psalm 146 gets a little more specific. There we’re told that the Lord liberates prisoners, opens blind eyes, lifts up the oppressed, watches over sojourners, and upholds widows and orphans. That’s basically a laundry list of all the outcasts of that day and age and culture.
It’s not only in the Old Testament that this comes to light. We see examples all through the Gospels. The outcasts – tax collectors and sinners, blind, lame, lepers, and demon-possessed – gathered around Jesus as He went about His earthly ministry, and Jesus didn’t merely tolerate them. He welcomed them, healed them, ate dinner with them, called them to be His disciples, and saw beyond their circumstances and past deeds. He gathered them into His kingdom.
One of my favorite verses is found in Psalm 84: “Even the sparrow finds a home, and a swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God”. (Ps 84:3) Even the sparrows – nearly worthless, sold two for a penny – find a home in the courts of the Lord. Even the sparrows, and we are worth much more than sparrows.
We too, though not wise, powerful, of noble birth, or strong according to worldly standards – outcasts, as it were – we too can find a home with the Lord. He gathers us in as well, as a hen covers her chicks with her wings, and there we belong.
I love this!
I have been reading the book “Iscariot” by Tosca Lee. This is a historical fiction account of the life of Judas who betrayed Christ. I have seen many incidents from a new perspective in this book, one of which is the revulsion toward outcasts and the shock of Jesus’ interaction with them. Powerful. (I also have never considered the back story of Judas and why he might have betrayed Jesus. It challenges my assumptions. )