Saturday, April 25, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 48
Devotional Thought
Late April is a season of walking. The cold has finally broken, and people who have been shut indoors for months are out circling their neighborhoods, inspecting gardens, eyeing the fresh paint on a neighbor’s porch. There is something in us that wants to walk around what we love and take its measure. Psalm 48 asks exactly that of us: “Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following.” The psalm is a song of the city of God, and it ends not with a command to feel something but to do something—to survey, to count, to consider, and then to speak. What we have seen of God’s faithfulness is not ours to keep privately. It is meant to be told.
The psalm opens with God’s greatness and beauty—”Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion”—but it does not stay in the clouds. It tells a story. Kings assembled against the city, and when they saw it, they “marvelled… were troubled, and hasted away.” Fear seized them like a woman in labor. Their ships of Tarshish, those great merchant vessels of the ancient world, were shattered by an east wind. What undid them was not Zion’s army but Zion’s God. The city’s true defense was never her walls; it was the presence of the LORD of hosts dwelling in her midst. “God is known in her palaces for a refuge.”
There is a steadying word here for the ordinary believer. We tend to measure our safety by visible bulwarks—savings accounts, health, the good opinion of others—and then panic when they crack. But the psalmist’s confidence rests elsewhere: “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts… God will establish it for ever.” He is not reciting rumor. He is testifying to what he has personally witnessed. The faith handed down to him has become the faith he has proved.
And notice where the psalm lands: not on architecture, but on a Person. “For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.” The towers will crumble, the palaces will fall, but the God who dwells among His people will guide them all the way home—even through the valley no one escapes. So take the walk this week. Trace the towers of God’s faithfulness in your own life. Then tell someone younger what you have seen.
Reflection
- What “towers” of God’s faithfulness can you point to in your own life—specific answers to prayer, provisions, or deliverances—that you have not yet told to the generation following?
- When the “kings” of fear and trouble assemble against you, do you run to visible bulwarks or to the God who is “known in her palaces for a refuge”?
Prayer
O great and greatly to be praised, we bless You, for You have been our refuge and our guide. We have heard with our ears what our fathers told us, and now we have seen it for ourselves: You establish Your people forever. Forgive us for trusting in our own bulwarks and forgetting the God who dwells in our midst. Walk us around Zion this day; open our eyes to Your lovingkindness in the midst of Your temple. Make us faithful witnesses, that we may tell the generation following of Your righteousness and Your praise unto the ends of the earth. Be our guide even unto death, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 48:1 — “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.”