There should be no exemption from the service of praising God.
So long as He lets us breathe, we should bless Him for His goodness and mercy.
Psalm 146
1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
2 While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
3 Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
4 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
5 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God:
6 Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever:
7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:
8 The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous:
9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
10 The LORD shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the LORD.
Psalm 146 – J. Vernon McGee
Psalm 146 – The Lord Loveth the Righteous
This and the four following psalms are the “Hallelujah” Psalms. Each begins with that Hebrew word (translated “Praise ye the LORD”). They were probably composed for use in the second Temple. In the Septuagint this psalm is ascribed to Zechariah and Haggai. The key to it is Psalm 146:5, which is the last of the twenty-six “Blesseds” in the Psalter. What can bring more blessedness into life than the recognition of Jehovah as Help and Hope?
Psalm 146:6-10 emphasizes the present tense in a way which reminds us of the words of our Lord: “My Father worketh hitherto” (John 5:17). It is true that with the oppressed and the prisoners in iron circumstance, the blind and the bowed-down, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widowed, the promises appear unfulfilled. This, however, is probably due to the failure of God’s Church and of themselves to realize that the Kingdom has been set up in the unseen sphere, but that we need to appropriate its deliverances by faith. “They which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign” (Romans 5:17). But all God’s promises, like the great promise of salvation, are contingent on the exercise of faith. —Through the Bible Day by Day
Psalm 146:4—In that very day his thoughts perish.
Surely we all have had reason to notice the vacillation and infirmity of thoughts which characterize too many of the sons of men. They promise to visit us every week, in our sickness or bereavement, but after a few months drop off. They pledge themselves to perform certain functions, but get lax, and ultimately the grass grows thick where their feet should have kept it down.
But we have most to complain of ourselves. Who among us has not bitterly to reproach himself for the evanescence of noble resolution—the dying down of earnest thoughts? Too often they have been like the early dew and the morning cloud. In the day in which we made them our thoughts have perished.
What is the remedy? It is suggested in those memorable words of Jesus, “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). When once Jesus has been allowed to do his chosen work in the soul, He opens a subterranean passage to the reservoirs of eternity, along and through which the supplies from God’s own heart begin to enter and rise up within the soul. Abide in Him, and the sap of his life will suggest, renew, and reinforce, the thoughts of the holy life. Rise up, O well, for ever rise, within hearts that desire a fixed thought to love God! Infirm of thought we need never be, God waits to create in us a right spirit (Psalm 51:10). We must be rooted and grounded in Him. Then will be manifest in us the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23). —Our Daily Homily