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It\u2019s useless for you to work from early morning until late at night just to get food to eat. God provides for those he loves even while they sleep. Children are a gift from the Lord. They are a reward from him (Psalm 127:2-3).

Reading the Bible well involves our imagination. It also requires understanding the whole story and its context. Too often Christians take material from the Old Testament story of Israel and apply it directly to individual Christian living. For example, this psalm has been used as an anti-birth control text or that the more children you have the more blessed you are. Such assertions fail to understand this psalm within the story of Israel.

This song was sung by the Israelites as they journeyed from their homes to worship at the temple. This could take days or weeks depending on where you lived. The psalm is about building a home and city that will endure. As today, that was no easy task. It took labour, sweat, labourers, time, money, etc., etc.

Yet, here is the home builder, the city planner, taking a month off from this work for religious festivals. Foolish, don't you think? Psalm 127 says, \u201cNot at all.\u201d This is a covenant song, addressing Israelite life in the promised land. The people needed to build, to sweat, to determine how to construct houses and city walls that would endure. But...

The BUT is very important. In Israel, the success and endurance of any building project is not directly tied to the sweat or skill of the builders BUT upon the blessing of God Almighty, the covenant Lord of Israel. This regular hiatus for worship was an act of faith. Those who believed in this BUT took time for it.

The words about children do not mean that we should have as many children as possible, rather, it was a statement of life in the promised land. The transition from one generation to another was not dependent on Israel's abilities or hard work but on the blessings of God. Children were a sign that God was enabling Israel to continue living in the promised land as his covenant people.

This psalm was a profession of faith sung to remember the most basic reality of Israel\u2019s life: her life was in God\u2019s hand. Without God, Israel was just another nation struggling to survive in a hostile world.

Here is where we can apply this psalm to our lives. Our work and life are in vain without the blessing and presence of God. The ability to earn a living and find relief from one\u2019s labours -- refreshing sleep -- comes from the hands of a loving Father. To build a house is no guarantee that we can live in it. Trying to do things without God is like trying to sail a sailboat by blowing into the sail.

This is a psalm for the hard-working, hard-driving person ... the kind of person who builds things, who runs things, who makes things happen. Who, when seeing that things aren't moving, the problem isn't getting solved, starts work earlier or works later or works harder to make things happen.

As a result, we unbalance our lives. The stress causes us to fall into neglecting our family, neglecting our sleep, neglecting our time with the Lord, and neglecting our Sabbaths. We work, work, work, but we become like corpses.

The Psalm does not encourage laziness. Rather, that we understand our income earning labour as an act of worship. The bottom line is not our primary motivator, but loving obedience. Our income is sometimes more than we deserve. Sometimes it is less than we hoped for. God\u2019s desire is that we see Him working in our daily labours, that we avoid depending on our own effort to succeed.

Yesterday was Wednesday, hump day. A word suggesting that our income earning labour is done primarily to enjoy the weekend. But what if we saw this labour as an opportunity to serve the Lord? What if we saw our work as our worship? A gift to God? That is what our Psalm is aiming at.

Today, ask God to show you how you can worship him in your labour. Ask him to show you how to serve your fellow labourers.