There's a kind of happiness the world can't give. As the song says, the world can't take it away from you either. Psalm 146 describes a happiness that doesn't depend on a perfect morning, an easy week, or everything going the way you planned. This happiness is a blessed assurance that you are held by God, who keeps faith forever.

The psalm opens with praise and circles back to it at the end. It's like the psalmist knew how easily we can drift. We start with good intentions, but life has a way of distracting us. Our problems get loud. Our worries push their way to the forefront of our lives. Before we realize it, our trust has slipped into whatever feels most accessible right now.

That's why the psalmist points us toward praise. Praise doesn't ignore reality; it helps us regain perspective. Praise reminds us of what stays true about God. We can see God again and realize that what frightens us doesn't frighten God. And when we praise, we recenter ourselves in the One who has been faithful to generations before us and promises to always be faithful.

The modern worship song many of us know, based on the line from Ruth 1, is about following where God leads. To be sure, that is an important idea to think about, how willing we are to follow where the Holy Spirit leads us. Sometimes, it's through the valleys and other times it's beside the still waters.

But Ruth has something else in mind. In fact, Ruth would not have thought about following God the way we do.

When Ruth makes her vow to Naomi, she is doing more than offering companionship. Listen again: Your people will be my people, and your God my God. She is stepping into Naomi's grief and letting it shape her own life. Ruth doesn't try to fix Naomi's pain, explain it away, or lighten it with easy, awkward words. Instead, she does something more powerful. She shares it.

Think about the beauty of that kind of faithfulness toward another person. Scripture speaks of bearing one another's burdens, but this is a vivid illustration of it lived out. Naomi has lost her husband and both her sons. Her world has collapsed. Orpah, her other daughter-in-law, understandably returns home. No one would blame Ruth if she did, too. But she chooses the road of shared sorrow, shared struggle, and shared hope. This wasn't anything strategic on her part. It was relational, brave, and costly.

That makes me think that we often underestimate the sacredness of our presence. Sometimes, the greatest gift we can give is not answers, solutions, or spiritual clichés. It's ourselves, and a willingness to say, "I don't know how this ends up, but I'm not going anywhere."

Our culture prefers to move quickly past discomfort. Ruth's story teaches us the holy work of staying even if it is uncomfortable or inconvenient.

If talk is cheap, words must be a dime a dozen. But not according to Jesus.

In one sense, the Lord reminds us there is accountability for the words we use. Do we use idle or useless words? Jesus has a word for that. In a world full of Twitter rants, comment sections, and hot takes, we'd do well to reflect more on what we say. Even throwaway comments can wound or heal long after we forget them.

Now, Jesus isn't demanding flawlessness or perfect speech. But he is connecting our speech to relationship and faithfulness. Careless words reveal the deeper currents of our heart.

When Jesus said we will have to answer for every useless word, he was speaking to a group of Pharisees. They had just said he was performing miracles by the authority of Beelzebul. In particular, he had just healed someone who was blind and unable to speak. Imagine the power of his words after meeting Jesus. And then the religious leaders use their words to discredit what God was doing through him. In other words, they weren't able or willing to see what God was doing.

There's a personal pet peeve that our social media focused culture keeps in the forefront of how many of us are used to doing church. It's when churches use advertising to promote themselves. I don't mean when we announce our activities online or in print. I mean when we take what we've seen and heard from commercials and try to impress upon people how good we are. In a sense, we're trying to sell our church.

I'm thinking about that today for a good reason. Romans 15:17 says, "So in Christ Jesus I brag about things that have to do with God." Now, we might assume everything we do as a church has to do with God. If only that would always be true.

Many times, we're focused on what we want to do and how we want to do it. We may not even recognize how we're even focused on certain kind of people when we promote ourselves.

As churches, maybe we can learn to be better reminder-ers than sellers. That is, let's constantly remind each other of what God's grace is and what it looks like within our community. Remind one another of the hope Christ has given us, and of the truth we have in Jesus. There's nothing in there you have to sell to anyone. In fact, that's all something you experience.

In Isaiah 24, the prophet paints a picture of the world being emptied out. Every part of life is impacted. It sounds dramatic because it's supposed to be. Anyone who has lived through loss, severe illness, conflict, or change knows what it feels like when the life you knew begins to crumble. Something happens that teaches us how little control we truly have.

For the people Isaiah spoke to, this disruption would be felt by everyone. There would be no escaping the emptiness brought on by the people's failing to keep their covenant with God. But even that dramatic scene would not be the end of God's work. The devastation Isaiah envisioned was also an invitation.

The prophet reminds us that there are things God longs to empty from us. There is our fear that keeps us from knowing the abundance of God. Our pride keeps us distant from God's grace. We have habits that dull our compassion and numb our awareness of God's presence. We hold on to things that keep us from growing.

When these things begin to shake, it can feel like punishment. Sometimes, it may be. But often it's grace in disguise. God is clearing space in our hearts and lives for something truer.

And what God does in individuals, God also does in our faith communities. Churches can cling to things that have stopped giving life. Sometimes, the Spirit disrupts our normal so we can see what our normal has been hiding. When God empties a community, it's not to leave us forsaken. It's to free us from whatever keeps us from loving well.